Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

by Nathan Gallizier

BOOK THE SECOND

[CHAPTER I]
THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN

Castel San Angelo, the Tomb of the Flavian Emperor, seemed rather to have been built for a great keep, a breakwater as it were to stem the rush of barbarian seas which were wont to come storming down from the frozen north, than for the resting-place of the former master of the world. Its constructors had aimed at nothing less than its everlastingness. So thick were its bastioned walls, so thick the curtains which divided its inner and outer masonry, that no force of nature seemed capable of honeycombing or weakening them.

Hidden within its screens and vaults, like the gnawings of a foul and intricate cancer, ran dark passages which discharged themselves here and there into dreadful dungeons, or secret places not guessed at in the common tally of its rooms.

These oubliettes were hideous with blotched and spotted memories, rotten with the dew of suffering, eloquent in their terror and corruption and darkness of the cruelty which turned to these walls for security. The hiss and purr of subterranean fires, the grinding of low, grated jaws, the flop and echo of stagnant water that oozed from a stagnant inner moat into vermin-swarming, human-haunted cellars: these sounds spoke even less of grief than the hellish ferment in the souls of those who had lorded it in this keep since the fall of the Western Empire.

On this night there hung an air of menace about the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor which seemed enhanced by the roar and clatter of the tempest that raged over the seven-hilled city. Snaky twists of lightning leaped athwart the driving darkness, and deafening peals of thunder reverberated in deep, booming echoes through the inky vault of the heavens.

In one of the upper chambers of the huge granite pile, which seemed to defy the very elements, in a square room, dug out of the very rock, containing but one window that appeared as a deep wedge in the wall, piercing to the sheer flank of the tower, there sat, brooding over a letter he held in his hand, Basil, the Grand Chamberlain.

The drowsy odor of incense, smouldering in the little purple shrine lamp, robbed the air of its last freshness.

A tunic of dark velvet, fur bound and girt with a belt of finest Moorish steel, was relieved by an undervest of deepest crimson. Woven hose to match the tunic ended in crimson buskins of soft leather. The mantle and the skull cap which he had discarded lay beside him on the floor, guarded by a tawny hound of the ancient Molossian breed.

By the fitful light of the two waxen tapers, which flickered dismally under the onslaught of the elements, the inmate of the chamber slowly and laboriously deciphered the letter. Then he placed it in his doublet, lapsing into deep rumination, as one who is vainly seeking to solve a problem that defies solution.

Rising at last from his chair Basil paced the narrow confines of the chamber, whose crimson walls seemed to form a fitting background for the dark-robed occupant.

Outside, the storm howled furiously, flinging gusty dashes of rain and hail against the stone masonry and clattering noisily with every blow inflicted upon the solid rock.

When, spent by its own fury, the hurricane abated for a moment, the faint sound of a bell tolling the Angelus could be heard whimpering through the night.

When Basil had left Theodora after their meeting at the palace, there had been a darker light in his eyes, a something more ominous of evil in his manner. While his passion had utterly enslaved him, making him a puppet in the hands of the woman whose boundless ambition must inevitably lead her either to the heights of the empire whereof she dreamed, or to the deepest abyss of hell, Basil was far from being content to occupy a position which made him merely a creature of her will and making. To mount the throne with the woman whose beauty had set his senses aflame, to rule the city of Rome from the ramparts of Castel San Angelo, as Ugo of Tuscany by the side of Marozia, this was the dream of the man who would leave no stone unturned to accomplish the ambition of his life.

In an age where certain dark personalities appeared terribly sane to their contemporaries, their occult dealings with powers whose existence none questioned must have seemed terribly real to themselves and to those who gazed from afar. When the mad were above the sane in power, and beyond the reach of observation, there was no limit to their baleful activity.

Basil, from the early days of his youth, had lived in a world of evil spirits, imaginary perhaps for us, but real enough for those who might at any moment be at his mercy. Stimulating his mad desire with the potent drug which the Saracens had brought with them from the scented East, he pushed his hashish-born imaginings to the very throne of Evil. His ambition, which was boundless, and centred in the longed for achievement of a hope too stupendous even for thought, had intimately connected him with those whose occult researches put them outside the pale of the Church, and the power he wielded in the shadowy world of demons was as unchallenged as that which he felt himself wielding in the tangible world of men.

Among the people there was no end to the dark stories of magic and poison, some of them real enough, that were whispered about him, and many a belated rambler looked with a shudder up to the light that burned in a chamber of his palace on the Pincian Hill till the wee, small hours of the night. Had he been merely a practitioner of the Black Arts he would probably long since have ended his career in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. But he was safe enough as one of the great ones of the world, the confidant of the Senator of Rome; safe, because he was feared and because none dared to oppose his baleful influence.

Basil pondered, as if the solution of the problem in his mind had at last presented itself, but had again left him, unsatisfied, in the throes of doubt and fear.

Rising from his seat he again unfolded the letter and peered over its contents.

"Can we regain the door by which we have entered?" he soliloquized. "Can we conquer the phantom that haunts the silent chambers of the brain? Were it an eye, or a hand, I could pluck it off. However, if I cannot strangle it, I can conquer it! Shall it forever blot the light of heaven from my path? Shall I forever suffer and tremble at this impalpable something—this shade from the abyss—of hell—that is there—yet not there?"

He paused for a moment in his perambulation, gazing through the narrow unglazed window into the storm-tossed night without. Now and then a flash of lightning shot athwart the inky darkness, lighting up dark recesses and deep embrasures. The sullen roar of the thunder seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.

And as the Grand Chamberlain walked, as if driven by some invisible demon, the great Molossian hound followed him about with a stealthy, noiseless gait, raising its head now and then as if silently inquiring into its master's mood.

When at length he reseated himself, the huge hound cowered at his feet and licked its huge paws.

The mood of the woman for whom his lust-bitten soul yearned as it had never yearned for anything on earth, her words of disdain, which had scorched his very brain, and, above all, the knowledge that she read his inmost thoughts, had roused every atom of evil within his soul. This state of mind was accentuated by the further consideration that she, of all women whom he had sent to their shame and death, was not afraid of him. She had even dared to hint at the existence of a rival who might indeed, in time, supersede him, if he were not wary.

For some time Basil had been vaguely conscious of losing ground in the favor of the woman whom no man might utterly trust save to his undoing. The rivalry of Roxaná, who, like her tenth-century prototypes, was but too eager to enter the arena for Marozia's fateful inheritance, had poured oil on the flames when Theodora had learned that the Senator of Rome himself was frequenting her bowers, and she was not slow to perceive the agency that was at work to defeat and destroy her utterly.

By adding ever new fuel to the hatred of the two women for each other Basil hoped to clear for himself a path that would carry him to the height of his aspirations, by compelling Theodora to openly espouse him her champion. Sooner or later he knew they would ignite under each other's taunts, and upon the ruins of the conflagration he hoped to build his own empire, with Theodora to share with him the throne.

Alberic had departed for the shrines of the Archangel at Monte Gargano. Intent upon the purification of the Church and upon matters pertaining to the empire, he was an element that needed hardly be reckoned with seriously. A successful coup would hurl him into the dungeons of his own keep, perchance, by some irony of fate, into the very cell where Marozia had so mysteriously and ignominiously ended her career. Once in possession of the Mausoleum, the Germans and Dalmatians bought and bribed, he would be the master—unless—

Suddenly the huge beast at his feet raised its muzzle, sniffing the air and uttering a low growl.

A moment later Maraglia, the Castellan of Castel San Angelo, entered through a winding passage.

"What brings you here at this hour, with your damned butcher's face?" Basil turned upon the newcomer who had paused when his gaze fell upon the Molossian.

The brutal features of Maraglia looked ghastly enough in the flickering light of the tapers and Basil's temper seemed to deepen their ashen pallor.

"My lord—it is there again,—in the lower gallery—near the cell where the Lady Marozia was strangled—"

"By all the furies of Hell! Since when are you in the secrets of the devil?"

"Since I held the noose, my Lord Basil," replied the warden of the Emperor's Tomb doggedly. "Though I knew not at the time whose breath was being shortened. It was all too dark—a night just like this—"

"Perchance your memory, going back to that hour, has retained something more than the mere surmise," Basil glowered from under the dark, straight brows. "How many were there?"

"There were three—all masked, my lord. But their voices were their own—"

"You possess a keen ear, my man, as one, accustomed to dark deeds and passages, well should," Basil interposed sardonically. "Deem you, in your undoubted wisdom, the lady has returned and is haunting her former abode? Once upon a time she was not wont to abide in estate so lowly. And, they say, she was beautiful—even to her death."

"And well they may," Maraglia interposed. "I saw her but twice. When she came, and before she died."

"Before she died?"

"And the look she bent upon him who led the execution," Maraglia continued thoughtfully. "She spoke not once. Dumb and silent she went to the fishes. When the Lord Alberic arrived, it was all too late—"

"All too late!" Basil interposed sardonically. "The fishes too were dumb. Profit by their example, Maraglia. Too much wisdom engenders death."

"The death rattle of one sounds to my ears just like that of another, my lord," Maraglia replied, quaking under the look that was upon him. "And the voices of the few who still abide are growing weaker day by day."

"They shall not much longer annoy your delicate ears," Basil replied. "The Senator who has found this abode somewhat too draughty has departed for the holy shrines, to do penance for the death of his mother. He suspects all was not well. He would know more. Perchance the Archangel may grant him a revelation. Meanwhile, we must to work. The new captain appointed by the Senator enters his service on the morrow. A holy man, much given to contemplation over the mysteries of love. His attention must be diverted. Every trace of life must be extinct—this very night. No proofs must be allowed to remain. Meanwhile, what of the apparition whereof you rave?"

"It is there, my lord, as sure as my soul lives," replied the castellan. "A shapeless something, preceded by a breath, cold as from a newly dug grave."

"A shapeless something, say you? Whence comes it and where goes it? For whose diversion does it perambulate?"

"The astrologer monk perchance who improvises prophecies."

"Then let his improvising damn himself," replied Basil sullenly. "To call himself inspired and pretend to read the stars! How about his prophecy now?"

"He holds to it!"

"What! That I have less than one month to live?"

"Just that—no more!"—

Basil gave the speaker a quick glance.

"What niggardly dispensation and presumption withal! This fellow to claim kinship with the stars! To profess to be in their confidence, to share the secrets of the heavens while he is smothered by darkness, utter and everlasting. The heavens mind you, Maraglia! My star! It is a star of darker red than Mars and crosses Hell—not Heaven! In thought I watch it every night with sleepless eyes. Is it not well to cleanse the earth of such lying prophets that truth may have standing room? Where have you lodged him?"

"In the Hermit's cell—"

"Well done! Thereby he shall prove his asceticism. Let practised abstinence save him in such a pass! He shall eat his words—an everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer—by the token—as I hear, was he not?"

"He was fat when he entered."

"Wretch! Would you starve him? Remember the worms and the fishes—your friends. Would you cheat them? Hath he foretold his end?"

"Ay—by starvation."

"He lies! You shall take him in extremis and, with your knife in his throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What of the night?"

"It rains and thunders."

"Why should we mind rain and thunder? Lead me to this madman, and, incidentally, to this phantom that keeps him company. Why do you gape, Maraglia? Move on! I follow!"

Maraglia was ill at ease, but he dared not disobey. Taking up one of the candles, he led the way, trembling, his face ashen, his teeth chattering, as if in the throes of a chill.

Through a panel door in the wall they descended a winding stairway, leaving the dog behind. The flight conducted them to a private postern, well secured and guarded inside and out. As they issued from this the howl of blown rain met and staggered them. Looking up at the cupola of basalt from the depths of that well of masonry, it seemed to crack and split in a rush of fusing stars. Basil's mad soul leapt to the call of the hour. He was one with this mighty demonstration of nature. His brain danced and flickered with dark visions of power. He appeared to himself as an angel, a destroying angel, commissioned from on high to purge the world of lies.

"Take me to this monk!" he screamed through the thunder.

Deep in the foundation of the northeastern crypts the miserable creature was embedded in a stone chamber as utterly void and empty as despair. The walls, the floor, the roof were all chiselled as smooth as glass. There was not a foothold anywhere even for a cat, neither door, nor traps, nor egress, nor window of any kind save where, just under the ceiling, the grated opening by which he had been lowered, admitted by day a haggard ghost of light. And even that wretched solace was withdrawn as night fell, became a phantom, a diluted whisp of memory, sank like water into the blackness, and left the fancy suddenly naked in the self-consciousness of hell. Then the monk screamed like a madman and threw himself towards the flitting spectre. He fell on the smooth surface of the polished rock and bruised his limbs horribly. Yet the very pain was a saving occupation. He struck his skull and revelled in the agonizing dance of lights the blow procured him. But one by one they blew out; and in a moment dead negation had him by the throat again, rolling him over and over, choking him under enormous slabs of darkness. Gasping, he cursed his improvidence, in not having glued his vision to the place of the light's going. It would have been something gained from madness to hold and gloat upon it, to watch hour by hour for its feeble redawn. Among all the spawning monstrosities of that pit, with only the assured prospect of a lingering death before him, the prodigy of eternal darkness quite overcrowded that other of thirst or starvation.

Yet the black gloom broke, it would seem, before its due. Had he annihilated time and was this death? He rose rapturously to his feet and stood staring at the grating, the tears gushing down his sunken cheeks. The bars were withdrawn, in their place a dim lamp was intruded and a face looked down.

"Barnabo—are you hungry and a-thirst?"

The voice spoke to him of life. It was the name he had borne in the world and he wondered who from that world could be addressing him.

He answered quaveringly.

"Of a truth, I am hungry and a-thirst."

"It is a beatitude," replied the voice suavely. "You shall have your fill of justice."

"Justice!" screamed the prisoner. "I fear it is but an empty phrase."

"Comfort yourself," said the other. "I shall make a full measure of it! It shall bubble and sparkle to the brim like a goblet of Cyprian. Know you the wine, monk? A cool fragrant liquid, that gurgles down the arid throat and brings visions of green meadows and sparkling brooks—"

"I ask no mercy," cried the monk, falling on his knees and stretching out his lean arms. "Only make an end of it—of this hellish torment."

"Torment?" came the voice from above. "What torment is there in the vision of the wine cup—or, for that matter, a feast on groaning tables under the trees? Are you not rich in experiences, Barnabo,—both of the board and of love? Remember the hours when she lay in your arms, innocent, save of original sin? Ah! Could she see you now, Barnabo—how you have changed! No more the elegant courtier that wooed Theodora ere despair drove you to don the penitential garb and, like Balaam's ass, to raise your voice and prophesy! Deem you—as fate has thrown her into these arms of mine—memory will revive the forgotten joys of the days of long ago?"

"Mercy—demon!" gasped the monk. His swollen throat could hardly shape the words.

Basil laughed and bent lower.

"Answer me then—you who boast of being inspired from above—you who listen to the music of the spheres in the dead watches of the night—tell me then, you man of God—how long am I to live?"

"Monster, relieve me of your sight!" shrieked the unhappy wretch.

"It is the light," mocked Basil. "The light from above. Raise your voice, monk, and prophesy. You who would hurl the anathema upon Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, who arrogated to yourself the mission to purge the universe and to summon me—me—before the tribunal of the Church—tell me, you, who aspired to take to his bed the spouse of the devil, till the white lightnings of her passion seared and blasted your carcass,—tell me—how long am I to live?"

An inarticulate shriek came from within.

"By justice—till the dead rise from their graves."

"Live forever—on an empty phrase?" Basil mocked. "Are you, too, provisioned for eternity?"

He held out his hand as if he were offering the starving wretch food.

The monk fell on his knees. His lips moved, but no sound was audible.

"Perchance he hath a vision," Basil turned to Maraglia who stood sullenly by.

"Oh, dull this living agony."

"How long am I to live?"

"Now, hear me, God," screamed the monk. "Let not this man ever again know surcease from torment in bed, at board, in body or in mind. Let his lust devour him, let the worm burrow in his entrails, the maggot in his brain! May death seize and damnation wither him at the moment when he is nearest the achievement of his fondest hopes!"

Basil screamed him down.

An uncontrollable terror had seized him.

"Silence, beast, or I shall strangle you!"

"Libertine, traitor, assassin—may heaven's lightnings blast you—"

For a moment the two battled in a war of screeching blasphemy.

At the next moment the grate was flung into place, the light whisked and vanished, a door slammed and the Stygian blackness of the cell closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst.

Basil's eyes gleamed like live coals as he turned to Maraglia, who, quaking and ashen, was babbling a prayer between white lips.

"Make an end of him!" he snarled. "He has lived too long. And now, in the devil's name, lead the way above!"

A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens illumined for a moment the dark and tortuous passage, its sheen reflected through the narrow port-holes on the blackness of the walls. It was followed by a peal of thunder so terrific that it shook the vast pile of the Emperor's Tomb to its foundations, clattering and roaring, as if a thousand worlds had been rent in twain.

Maraglia, who had preceded the Grand Chamberlain with the taper, uttered a wild shriek of terror, dropped the light, causing it to be extinguished and his fleeting steps carried him down a night-wrapped gallery as fast as his limbs would carry him, utterly indifferent to Basil's fate in the Stygian gloom.

Paralyzed with terror, the Grand Chamberlain stared into the inky blackness. For a moment it had seemed to him as if a breath from an open grave had indeed been wafted to his nostrils.

But it was neither the thunder, nor the lightning, neither the swish of the rain nor the roar of the hurricane, that had prompted Maraglia's outcry and precipitate flight and his abject terror, as we shall see.

---

[CHAPTER II]
THE CALL OF EBLIS

In the lurid flash that had illumined the gallery, lighting up rows of cells and deep recesses, Basil had seen, as if risen from the floor, a black, indefinable shape, wrapped in a long black mantle, the hood of which was drawn over its face. Through its slits gleamed two eyes, like live coals. Of small stature and apparently great age, the bent apparition supported itself by a crooked staff, the fleshless fingers barely visible under the cover of the ample sleeve, and resembling the claws of some bird of prey.

At last the terror which the uncanny apparition inspired changed to its very counterpart, as, defiance in his tone, the Grand Chamberlain made a forward step.

"Who goes there?—Friend or foe of the Lord Basil?"—

His voice sounded strange in his own ears.

A gibbering response quavered out of the gloom.

"What matters friend or foe as long as you grasp the tenure of power?"

Basil breathed a sigh of relief.

"I ought to know that voice. You are Bessarion?"

"I have waited long," came the drawling reply.

There was a pause brief as the intake of a breath.

"What do you demand?"—

"You shall know in time."

"In time comes death!"

"And more!"

"It is the hour that calls!"

"Are you prepared?"

"Show me what you can do!"

"For this I am here! Are you afraid?"

The air of mockery in the questioner's tone cut the speaker to the quick.

In the intermittent flashes of lightning Basil saw the shapeless form cowering before him in the dusk of the gallery, barring the way. But again it mingled quickly with the darkness.

"Of whom?" Basil queried.

There was another pause.

"Of the Presence!"

"That craven hound Maraglia has upset the light," muttered Basil. "I cannot see you."

"Can you not feel my presence?" came the gibbering reply.

"Even so!"

"Know you what high powers of night control your life—what dark-winged messengers of evil fly about you?"

"Your words make my soul flash like a thunder cloud."

"And yet does your power stand firm?"

"It rests on deep dug dungeons, where the light of heaven does not intrude. I spread such fear in men's white hearts as the craven have never known."

A faint chuckle came in reply.

"Only last night I saw you in the magic crystal sphere in which I read the dire secrets of Fate. Above your head flew evil angels. Beneath your horse's hoofs a corpse-strewn path."

"The time is not yet ripe."

"Time does not wait for him who waits to dare."

An evil light flashed from Basil's eyes.

"What can you do?"

Response came as from the depths of a grave.

"I shall conjure such shapes from the black caves of fear as have not ventured forth since madness first began to prowl among the human race, when the torturing dusk drowns every helpless thing in livid waves of shadow. It is the spirit of your sire that draws the evil legions to you."

Basil straightened in surprise.

"What know you of him?" he exclaimed. "Dull prayers and fasts and penances, not such freaks as this, were the only things he thought of."

From the cowled form came a hiss.

"Fool! Not that grunting and omnivorous swine who took the cowl, begat you! Your veins run with fiery evil direct from its fountainhead. No, no,—not he!"

"Not he?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain. "If I am not his progeny, then whose?"

"Some mighty lord's."

"The Duke of Beneventum?"

"One greater yet."

"King Berengar?"

"One adored by him as his liege."

"Ha! I guess it now! It was Otto the Great, he whose fury gored the heart of the Romans."

"One greater still."

"Earth hath no greater lord."

"Is there not heaven above and hell below? Your sire rules the millions who have donned fear's stole forever. He is lord of lords, where all the lips implore and none reply."

A flash of lightning gleamed through the gallery.

A shadow passed over Basil's countenance, like a swift sailing cloud.

Darkness supervened, impenetrable, sepulchral.

"Well may you cower," gibbered the shape in its inexorable monotone. "For you came into this life among the death-fed mushrooms that grow where murder rots. The moon-struck wolves howled for three nights, and ill-omened birds flapped for three days around the tower where she who gave you life breathed her last."

A fitful muttering as of souls in pain seemed to pervade the night-wrapped galleries, with sultry storm gusts breathing inarticulate evil. No light save the white flash of the lightning revealed now and then the uncanny form of the speaker. The smell of rotting weeds came through the crevices of the wall.

When Basil, spell-bound, found no tongue, the dark shape continued:

"Wrapped in midnight's cloak, nine witches down in the castle moat sang a baptismal hymn of horror as you saw the light. As mighty brazen wings sounded the roaring of the tempest-churned seas. And above you stood he who holds the keys to thought's dark chambers, he in whose ranks the sullen angels serve, whose shadowy dewless wings cast evil on the world. And I am he whose palace rings with the eternal Never!"

Frozen with terror Basil listened.

The thunder growled ever louder. A vampire's bark stabbed the darkness; the shriek of witches rose above the tempest, there was a rattling of bones as if skeletons were rising from their graves. All round the Emperor's Tomb the ghouls were prowling, and the soulless corpses were as restless as the fleshless souls that whimpered and moaned in the night. Giant bats flew to and fro like evil spirits. The great peals shook the huge pile from vault to summit. The running finger of the storm scribbled fiery, cabalistical zigzags on the firmament's black page. And in every peal, louder and louder as the echoes spread, Basil seemed to hear his name shrieked by the weird powers of darkness, till, half mad with terror, he cried:

"Away! Away! Your presence flings dark glare like glowing lava—"

"I come across the night," replied the voice, "ere death has made you mine! Deserve the doom that is prepared for those who do my bidding. You have shot into my heart a ray of blackest light—"

Basil held out his hands, as if to ward off some unseen assailant.

"Whirl back into the night—" he shrieked, but the voice resumed, mocking and gibbering.

"Only a coward will shrink from the dreadful boundaries between things of this earth and things beyond this earth. I have sought you by night and by day—as fiercely as any of those athirst pant round hell's mock springs! In the great vaults of wrath, in the sleepless caverns, whose eternal darkness is only lighted by pools of molten stone that bathe the lost, where, in the lurid light, the shadows dance—I sit and watch the lakes of torment, taciturn and lone. I summon you to earthly power—to the fulfillment of all your heart desires!"—

The voice ceased. All the elements of hell seemed to roar and shriek around the battlemented walls.

There was a pause during which Basil regained his composure.

At last the dread shadow was looming across his path. An undefined awe crept over him, such as dark chasms instill; an awe at his own self. He would fain have been screened from his own substance. By degrees he welcomed the tidings with a dark rapture. In himself lay the substance of Evil. It was not the Angel of Light that ruled the reeling universe. It was the shadow of Eblis looming dark and terrible over the lives of men. Long before he had ever guessed what rills of flaming Phlegethon ran riot in his veins, had he not felt his pulses swell with joy at human pain, had he not played the fiend untaught? Could not the Fiend, as well as God, live incarnate in human clay? Was not the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? And why should not he, Basil, defying Heaven, be Hell's incarnation?—

Ay—but the day of death and the day of reckoning! Would his parentage entail eternal fire, or princely power and sway in the dark vaults of nameless terror? Should he quail or thrill with awful exaltation?

"And—in return for that which I offer up—King of the dark red glare—will you give to me what I crave—boundless power and the woman for which my soul is on fire?"

"Have you the courage to snatch them from the talons of Fate?" came back the gibbering reply.

A blinding flash of lightning was succeeded by an appalling crash of thunder.

"From Hell itself!" shrieked Basil frenzied. "Give me Theodora and I will fill the cup of torture that I have seized on your shadowy altars, and quaff your health at the terrific banquet board of Evil in toasts of torment—in wine of boundless pain!"

In the quickly succeeding flashes of lightning the dark form seemed to rise and to expand.

"I knew you would not fail me! Come!"

For a moment Basil hesitated, fingering the hilt of his poniard.

"Where would you lead me?" he queried, his tone far from steady. "How many of these twilights must I traverse before I see him whom you serve?"

"That you shall know to-night!"

In the deep and frozen silence which succeeded the terrible peals of thunder their retreating footsteps died to silence in the labyrinthine galleries of the Emperor's Tomb.

Only the dog-headed Anubis seemed to stare and nod mysteriously.

[CHAPTER III]
THE CRYSTAL SPHERE

Outwardly and in daylight there was nothing noticeable about the sixth house in the Lane of the Sclavonians in Trastevere beyond the fact that it was a dwelling of a superior kind to those immediately surrounding it, which were chiefly ill-favored cottages of fishermen and boatmen, and had about it an air of almost sombre retirement.

It stood alone within a walled court, containing a few shrubs. The windows were few, high and narrow, and the front bore a rather forbidding appearance. One ascending to the flat roof would have found it to command on the left a desolate view of a square devoted to executions, and on the right a scarcely more cheerful prospect over the premises belonging to the convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Had the visitor been farther able to penetrate into the principal chamber of the first floor, on the night of the scene about to be related, he might indeed have found himself well repaid for his trouble.

This chamber, which was of considerable size and altogether devoid of windows, being lighted during the daytime by a skylight, carefully blinded from within, was now duskily illumined by a transparent device inlaid into the end wall and representing the beams of the rising moon gleaming from a sky of azure. The extremity of the room, which fronted the symbol, was semi-circular and occupied by a narrow table, before which moved a tall, shadowy form that paused now and then before a fire of fragrant sandal wood, which burned in a brazen tripod, passing his fingers mechanically, as it would seem, through the bluish flame. In its unsteady flicker the strange figures on the walls, which had defied the decree of Time, seemed to nod fantastically when touched by a fitful ray.

This was Hormazd, the Persian, the former confidant and counsellor of Marozia, in the heyday of her glory. In those days he had held forth in a turret chamber on the summit of Castel San Angelo, where he would read the stars and indulge his studies in the black arts to his heart's content. Driven forth by Alberic, after Marozia's fall, the Persian had taken up his abode in the Trastevere, where he continued to serve those who came to him for advice, or on business that shunned the light of day.

Now and then the Oriental bent his tall, spare form over a huge tome which lay open upon the table, the inscrutable, ascetic countenance with the deep, brilliant eyes seemingly plunged in deep, engrossing thought, but in reality listening intently, as for the approach of some belated caller.

The soft patter of hurried footsteps on the floor of the corridor without soon rewarded his attention. The rustle of a woman's silken garments caused him to give a start of surprise. A heavy curtain was raised and she glided noiselessly into his presence.

The woman's face was covered with a silken vizor, but her coronet of raven hair no less than the matchless figure, outlined against the crimson glow, at once proclaimed her rank.

The first ceremony of silent greeting absolved, the Persian's visitor permitted the black silken cloak which had enveloped her from head to toe, to fall away, revealing a form exquisitely proportioned. The ivory pallor of the throat, which rose like a marble column from matchless shoulders, and the whiteness of the bare arms, seemed even enhanced by the dusky background whose incense-laden pall seemed to oppress the very walls.

"I am trusting you to-night with unreserved confidence," the woman spoke in her rich, vibrant voice. "Many serve me from motives of selfishness and fear. Do you serve me, because I trust you."

She laid her white hand frankly upon his arm and the Persian, isolated above and below the strongest impulses of humanity, shivered under her touch.

"What is it you desire?" he questioned after a pause.

"If you possess the knowledge with which the vulgar credit you," the woman said slowly, not without an air of mockery in her tone, "I hardly need reveal to you the motives which prompted this visit! You knew them, ere I came, even as you knew of my coming!"

"You speak truly," said Hormazd slowly, now completely master of himself. "For even to the hour it was revealed to me!"

The woman scanned him with a searching look.

"Yet I had confided in none!" she said musingly. "Tell me then who I am!"

"You are Theodora!"

"When have we met before?"—

"Not in this life, but in a previous existence. Our souls touched then, predestined to cross each other on a future plane."

She removed her silken vizor and faced him.

The dark eyes at once challenged and besought. No sculptor could have chiselled those features on which a divinity had recklessly squandered all it had to bestow for good or for evil. No painter could have reproduced the face which had wrought such havoc in the hearts of men.

Like summer lightnings in a dark cloudbank, all the emotions of the human soul seemed to have played therein and left it again, forging it in the fires of passion, but leaving it more beautiful, more mysterious than before.

The Oriental regarded her in silence, as she stood before him in the flickering flame of the brazier.

"In some previous existence, you say?" she said with dreamy interest. "Who was I then—and who were you?"

"Two driftless spirits on the driftless sea of eternity," he replied calmly. "Foredoomed to continue our passage till our final destiny be fulfilled."

"And this destiny is known to you?"

"Else I had watched in vain. But you—queen and sorceress—do you believe in the message?"

She pondered.

"I believe," she said slowly, "that we make for ourselves the destiny to which hereafter we must submit. I believe that some dark power can foretell that destiny, and more—compel it!"—

Hormazd bowed ever so slightly. There was a dawning gleam of satire in his brilliant eyes, a glimpse which was not lost on her.

Again the question came.

"What is it you desire?"

Theodora gave an inscrutable smile that imparted to her features a singular softness and beauty, as a ray of sunlight falling on a dark picture will brighten the tints with a momentary warmth of seeming life.

"I was told," she spoke slowly, as if trying to overcome an inward dread, "that you are known in Rome chiefly as being the possessor of some mysterious internal force which, though invisible, is manifest to all who place themselves under your spell! Is it not so?"

The Persian bowed slightly.

"It may be that I have furnished the Romans with something to talk about besides the weather; that I have made a few friends, and an amazing number of enemies—"

"The latter argues in your favor," Theodora interposed. "They say, furthermore, that by this same force you are enabled to disentangle the knots of perplexity that burden the overtaxed brain."

Hormazd nodded again and the sinister gleam of his eyes did not escape Theodora's watchful gaze.

"If this be so," the woman continued, "if you are not an impostor who exhibits his tricks for the delectation of the rabble, or for sordid gain—exert your powers upon me, for something, I know not what, has frozen up the once overflowing fountain of life."

The Oriental regarded her intently.

"You have the wish to be deluded—even into an imaginary happiness?"

Theodora gave a start.

"You have expressed what I but vaguely hinted. It may be that I am tired"—she passed her hand across her brow with a troubled gesture—"or puzzled by some infinite distress of living things. Perchance I am going mad—who knows? But, whatever the cause, you, if report be true, possess the skill to ravish the mind away from its trouble, to transport it to a radiant Elysium of illusions and ecstasies. Do this for me, as you have done it for another, and, whatever payment you demand, it shall be yours!"

She ceased.

Faintly through the silence came the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the Aventine, pealing through the fragrant summer night above the deep boom of distant thunder that seemed to come as from the bowels of the earth.

Hormazd gave his interrogator a swift, searching glance, half of pity, half of disdain.

"The great eastern drug should serve your turn," he replied sardonically. "I know of no other means wherewith to stifle the voice of conscience."

Theodora flushed darkly.

"Conscience?" she flashed in resentful accents.

The Persian nodded.

"There is such a thing. Do you profess to be without one?"

Theodora's eyes endeavored to pierce the inscrutable mask before her. The ironical curtness of the question annoyed her.

"Your opinion of me does little honor to your wisdom," she said after a pause.

"A foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sack-cloth," came the dark reply.

"How know you that I desire relief from this imaginary malady?"

The Oriental gave a shrug.

"Why does Theodora come to the haunts of the Persian? Why does she ask him to mock and delude her, as if it were his custom to make dupes of those who appeal to him?"

"And are they not your dupes?" Theodora interposed, her face a deeper pallor than before.

"Of that you shall judge after I have answered your questions," Hormazd returned darkly. "There are but two things in life that will prompt a woman like Theodora to seek aid of one like myself."—

"You arouse my curiosity!"

"Disappointment in power—or love!"

There was a silence.

"Will you help me?"

She was pleading now.

The Oriental sparred for time. It was not his purpose to commit himself at once.

"I am but one who, long severed from the world, has long recognized its vanities. My cures are for the body rather than the soul."

Theodora's face hardened into an expression of scorn.

"Am I to understand that you will do nothing for me?" she said in a tone which convinced the Persian that the time for dallying was past.

The words came slowly from his lips.

"I can promise you neither self-oblivion nor visionary joys. I possess an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control, overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. But—what in that state its experience may be, whether joy or sorrow, I cannot foretell."

"Then you are not the master of the phantoms you evoke?"

"I am merely their interpreter!"

She looked at him steadfastly as if pondering his words.

"And you profess to be able to release the soul from its abode of clay?"

"I do not profess," he said quietly. "I can do so!"

"And with the success of this experiment your power ceases? You cannot tell whether the imprisoned creature will take its course to the netherworld of suffering, or a heaven of delight?"

"The liberated soul must shift for itself."

"Then begin your incantations," Theodora exclaimed recklessly. "Send me, no matter where, so long as I escape from this den of the world, this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank, unmeaning horror of life. Prove to me that the soul you prattle of exists, and if mine can find its way straight to the mainsprings of this revolving creation, it shall cling to the accursed wheels and stop them, that they may grind out the torture of life no more."

She stood there, dark, defiant, beautiful with the beauty of the fallen angel. Her breath came and went quickly. She seemed to challenge some invisible opponent.

The tall sinewy form by her side watched her as a physician might watch in his patient the workings of a new disease, then Hormazd said in low and tranquil tones:

"You are in the throes of your own overworked emotions. You are seeking to obtain the impossible—"

"Why taunt me?" she flashed. "Cannot your art supply the secret in whose quest I am?"

The Persian bowed, but kept silent.

Again, with the shifting mood, the rare, half-mournful smile shone in Theodora's face.

"Though you may not be conscious of it," she said, laying her white hand on his trembling arm, "something impels me to unburden my heart to you. I have kept silence long."

Hormazd nodded.

"In the world one must always keep silence, veil one's grief and force a smile with the rest. Is it not lamentable to think of all the pent-up suffering, the inconceivably hideous agonies that remain forever unrevealed? Youth and innocence—"

Theodora raised her arm.

"Was I ever—what they call—innocent?" she interposed musingly. "When I was young—alas, how long it seems, though I am but thirty—the dream of my life was love! Perchance I inherited it from my mother. She was a Greek, and she possessed that subtle quality that can never die. What I was—it matters not. What I am—you know!"

She raised herself to her full height.

"I long for power. Men are my puppets. And I long for love! I have sought it in all shapes, in every guise. But I found it not. Only disillusion—disappointment have been my share. Will my one desire be ever fulfilled?"

"Some day you shall know," he said quietly, keeping his dark gaze upon her.

"I doubt me not I shall! But—when and where? Tell me then, you who know so much! When and where?"

Hormazd regarded her quizzically, but made no immediate reply.

After a time she continued.

"Some say you are the devil's servant! Show me then your power. Read for me my fate!"

She looked at him with an air of challenge.

"It was not for this you came," the Persian said calmly, meeting the gaze of those mysterious wells of light whose appeal none had yet resisted whom she wished to bend to her desires.

The woman turned a shade more pale.

"Then call it a whim!"

"What will it avail?"

Her eyes flashed.

"My will against—that other."

A flash of lightning was reflected on the dark walls of the chamber. The thunder rolled in grand sullen echoes down the heavens.

She heard it not.

"What are you waiting for?" she turned to Hormazd.

There was a note of impatience in her tone.

"You are of to-day—yet not of to-day! Not of yesterday, nor to-morrow. To some in time comes love—"

"But to me?"

His voice sank to a frozen silence.

She stood, gazing at him steadily. She was very pale, but the smile of challenge still lingered on her lips.

"But to me?" she repeated.

He regarded her darkly.

"To you? Who knows?—Some day—"

"Ah! When my fate has chanced! Are you a cheat then, like the rest?"

He was silent, as one in the throes of some great emotion. She took a step towards him. He raised both hands as if to ward her off. His eyes saw shapes and scenes not within the reach of other's ken.

"Tell me the truth," she said calmly. "You cannot deceive me!"

Hormazd sprinkled the cauldron with some white powder that seethed and hissed as it came in contact with the glowing metal and began to emit a dense smoke, which filled the interior of the chamber with a strange, pungent odor.

Then he slowly raised one hand until it touched Theodora. Dauntless in spirit, her body was taken by surprise, and as his clammy fingers closed round her own she gave an involuntary start. With a compelling glance, still in silence, he looked into her face.

A strange transformation seemed to take place.

She was no longer in the chamber, but in a grove dark with trees and shrubbery. A dense pall seemed to obscure the skies. The atmosphere was breathless. Even as she looked he was no longer there. Great clouds of greenish vapor rolled in through the trees and enveloped her so utterly as to shut out all vision. It was as if she were alone in some isolated spot, far removed from the ken of man. She was conscious of nothing save the insistent touch of his hand upon her arm.

Gradually, as she peered into the vapors, they seemed to condense themselves into a definite shape. [It was that of a man coming towards her], but some invisible agency seemed ever to retard his approach. In fact the distance seemed not to lessen, and suddenly she saw her own self standing by, vainly straining her gaze into space, indescribable longing in her eyes.

A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the vault of heaven was followed by so terrific a peal of thunder that it seemed to shake the very earth.

A shriek broke from Theodora's lips.

"It is he! It is he!" she cried pointing to the curtain. Hormazd turned, hardly less amazed than the woman. He distinctly saw, in the recurrent flash, a face, pale and brooding, framed by the darkness, of which it seemed a part.

At the next moment it was gone, as if it had melted into air.

Theodora's whole body was numb, as if every nerve had been paralyzed. The Persian was hardly less agitated.

"Is it enough?" she heard Hormazd's deep voice say beside her.

She turned, but, though straining her eyes, she could not see him. The flame in the tripod had died down. She was trembling from head to foot.

But her invincible will was unshaken.

"Nay," she said, and her voice still mocked. "Having seen the man my soul desires, I must know more. The end! I have not seen the end! Shall I possess him? Speak!"

"Seek no more!" warned the voice by her side. "Seek not to know the end!"

She raised herself defiantly.

"The end!"

He made no reply. She saw the white vapors forming into faces. The hour and the place of the last vision were not clear. She saw but the man and herself, standing together at some strange point, where time seemed to count for naught.

Between them lay a scarf of blue samite.

After a protracted silence a moan broke from Theodora's lips.

The Persian took no heed thereof. He did not even seem to hear. But, beneath those half-closed lids, not a movement of the woman escaped his penetrating gaze. Though possessed with a vague assurance of his own dark powers, controlled by his nerve and coolness, Hormazd could read in that fair, inscrutable face far more than in the magic scrolls.

And as he scanned it now, from under half-shut lids, it was fixed and rigid as marble, pale, too, with an unearthly whiteness. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She seemed to look into space, yet even as he gazed, the expression of that wonderfully fair face changed.

Theodora's eyes were fierce, her countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.

The tools of love and ambition are sharp and double-edged, and Hormazd knew it was safer to trust to wind and waves than to the whims of woman.

But already her mood had changed and her face had resumed its habitual expression of inscrutable repose.

"Is it the gods or the devil who sway and torture us and mock at our helplessness?" she turned to the Oriental, then, without waiting his reply, she concluded with a searching glance that seemed to read his very heart.

"Report speaks true of you. Unknowingly, unwittingly you have pointed the way. Farewell!"

Long after she had disappeared Hormazd stared at the spot where her swiftly retiring form had been engulfed by the darkness. Then, weighing the purse, which she had left as an acknowledgment of his services, and finding it sufficiently heavy to satisfy his avarice, the Persian stood for a time wrapped in deep thoughts.

"That phantom at least I could not evoke!" he muttered to himself. "Who dares to cross the path of Hormazd?"

The thunder seemed to answer, for a crash that seemed to split the seven hills asunder caused the house to rock as with the force of an earthquake.

With a shudder the Persian extinguished the fire in the brazier and retreated to his chamber, while outside thunder and lightning and rain lashed the summer night with the force of a tropical hurricane.

---

[CHAPTER IV]
PERSEPHONÉ

It was not Tristan's other self, conjured by the Persian from the mystic realms of night which Theodora had seen outlined against the dark curtain that screened the entrance into the Oriental's laboratory. The object of her craving had, indeed, been present in the body, seeking in the storm that suddenly lashed the city the shelter of an apparently deserted abode. Thus he had unwittingly strayed into the domain of the astrologer, finding the door of his abode standing ajar after Theodora had entered.

A superstition which was part and parcel of the Persian's character, caused the latter to regard the undesired presence in the same light as did Theodora, the more so as, for the time, it served his purpose, although, when the woman had departed, he was puzzled no little over a phenomenon which his skill could not have conjured up. Tristan had precipitately retreated, so soon as the woman's outcry had reached his ear, convinced that he had witnessed some unholy incantation which must counteract the effect of the penances he had just concluded and during the return from which the tempest had overtaken him.

Thoroughly drenched he arrived at the Inn of the Golden Shield and retired forthwith, wondering at the strange scene which he had witnessed and its import.

Tristan arose early on the following day.

On the morrow he was to enter the service of the Senator of Rome, who had departed on his pilgrimage to the shrines of Monte Gargano.

Tristan resolved to make the most of his time, visiting the sanctuaries and fitly preparing himself to be worthy of the trust which Alberic had reposed in him. Yet his thoughts were not altogether of the morrow. Once again memory wandered back to the sunny days in Provence, to the rose garden of Avalon, and to one who perchance was walking alone in the garden, along the flower-bordered paths where he had found and lost his greatest happiness.—

Persephoné meanwhile had not been idle. It pleased her for once to propitiate her mistress, and through her own spies she had long been informed of Tristan's movements, being not altogether averse to starting an intrigue on her own account, if her mistress should fail sufficiently to impress the predestined victim. Her own beauty could achieve no less.

Drawing a veil about her head and shoulders so as effectually to conceal her features, she proceeded to thread her way through the intricate labyrinth of Roman thoroughfares. When she reached her destination she concealed herself in a convenient lurking place from which she took care not to emerge till she had learned all she wished from one who had dogged Tristan's footsteps all these weary days.

"What do you want with me?" asked the latter somewhat disturbed by her sudden appearance, as he came out of the little temple church of San Stefano in Rotondo on the brow of the Cælian Hill.

Persephoné had raised her veil and in doing so had taken care to reveal her beautiful white arms.

"I am unwelcome doubtless," she replied, after a swift glance had convinced her that there was no one near to witness their meeting. "Nevertheless you must come with me—whether you will or no. We Romans take no denial. We are not like your pale, frozen women of the North."

Subscribing readily to this opinion, Tristan felt indignant, nevertheless, at her self-assurance.

"I have neither time nor inclination to attend upon your fancies," he said curtly, trying to pass her. But she barred his passage.

"As for your inclination to follow me," Persephoné laughed—"that is a matter for you to decide, if you intend to prosper in your new station."

She paused a moment, with a swift side glance at the man. Persephoné had not miscalculated the effect of her speech, for Tristan had started visibly at her words and the knowledge they implied.

"As for your time," Persephoné continued sardonically, "that is another matter. No doubt there are still a few sanctuaries to visit," she said suggestively, with tantalizing slowness and a tinge of contempt in her tones that was far from assumed. "Though I am puzzled to know why one of your good looks and courage should creep like a criminal from shrine to shrine, when hot life pulsates all about us. Are your sins so grievous indeed?"

She could see that the thrust had pierced home.

"This is a matter you do not understand," he said, piqued at her persistence. "Perchance my sins are grievous indeed."

"Ah! So much the better," Persephoné laughed, showing her white teeth and approaching a step closer. "The world loves a sinner. What it dislikes is the long-faced repentant transgressor. You are a man after all—it is time enough to become a saint when you can no longer enjoy. Come!"

And the white arm stole forth and a white hand took hold of his mantle.

Every word of the Circassian seemed to sting Tristan like a wasp. His whole frame quivered with anger at her taunts, but he scorned to show it, and putting a strong constraint upon his feelings he only asked quietly:

"What would you with me? Surely it was not to tell me this that you have tracked me hither."

Persephoné thought she had now brought the metal to a sufficiently high temperature for fusion. She proceeded to mould it accordingly. Nevertheless she was determined to gain some advantage for herself in executing her mistress' behest.

"I tracked you here," she said slowly, "because I wanted you! I wanted you, because it is in my power to render you a great service. Listen, my lord,—you must come with me! It is not every man in Rome who would require so much coaxing to follow a good-looking woman—"

She looked very tempting as she spoke, but her physical charms were indeed sadly wasted on the pre-occupied man before her, and if she expected to win from him any overt act of admiration or encouragement, she was to be woefully disappointed.

"I cannot follow you," he said. "My way lies in another direction. Besides—you have said it yourself—I am now in the service of another."

"That is the very reason," she interposed. "Have you ever stopped to consider the thousand and one pitfalls which your unwary feet will encounter when you—a stranger—unknown—hated perchance—attempt to wield the authority entrusted to you? What do you know of Rome that you should hope to succeed when he, who set you in this hazardous place, cannot quell the disturbances that break out between the factions periodically?"

"And why should you be disposed to confer upon me such a favor?" Tristan asked with instinctive caution. "I am a stranger to you. What have we in common?"

Persephoné laughed.

"Perchance I am in love with you myself—ever since that night when you would not enter the forbidden gates. Perchance you may be able to serve me in turn—some day. How cold you are! Like the frozen North! Come! Waste no more time, if you would not regret it forevermore."—

There was something compelling in her words that upset Tristan's resolution.

Still, he wavered.

"You have seen my mistress," Persephoné resumed, "the fairest woman and the most powerful in Rome—a near kinswoman, too, of your new master—the Senator."

The words startled Tristan.

"It needs but a word from her to make you what she pleases," she continued, as they delved into the now darkening streets. "She is headstrong and imperious and does not brook resistance to her will."

Tristan remembered certain words Alberic had spoken to him at their final parting. It behooved him to be on his guard, yet without making of Theodora an open enemy. "Be wary and circumspect," had been the Senator's parting words.

"Did the Lady Theodora send you for me?" he asked, with some anxiety in his tone. "And how did you know where to find me in a city like this?"

"I know a great many things—and so does my mistress," Persephoné made smiling reply. "But she does not choose every one to be as wise as she is. I will answer both your questions though, if you will answer one of mine in return. The Lady Theodora did not mention you by name," Persephoné prevaricated, "yet I do not think there is another man in Rome who would serve her as would you.—And now tell me in turn.—Deem you not, she is very beautiful?"

"The Lady Theodora is very beautiful," Tristan replied with a hesitation that remained not unremarked. "Yet, what is there in common between two strangers from the farthest extremities of the earth?"

"What is there in common?" Persephoné smiled. "You will know ere an hour has sped. But, if you would take counsel from one who knows, you will do wisely to ponder twice before you choose—your master. Silence now! Step softly, but follow close behind me! It is very dark under the trees."

They had arrived on Mount Aventine. Before them, in the dusk, towered the great palace of Theodora.

After cautioning him, Persephoné led Tristan through a narrow door in a wall and they emerged in a garden. They were now in a fragrant almond grove where the branches of the trees effectually excluded the rays of the rising moon, making it hardly possible to distinguish Persephoné's tall and lithe form.

Presently they emerged upon a smooth and level lawn, shut in by a black group of cedars, through the lower branches of which peeped the crescent moon and, turning the corner of a colonnade, they entered another door which opened to Persephoné's touch and admitted them into a long dark passage with a lamp at the farther end.

"Stay here, while I fetch a light," Persephoné whispered to Tristan and, gliding away, she presently returned, to conduct him through a dark corridor into another passage, where she stopped abruptly and, raising some silken hangings, directed him to enter.

"Wait here. I will announce you."—

---

[CHAPTER V]
MAGIC GLOOMS

Floods of soft and mellow light dazzled Tristan's eyes at first, but he soon realized the luxurious beauty of the retreat into which he had been ushered. It was obvious that, despite a decadent age, all the resources of wealth had been drawn upon for its decoration. The walls were painted in frescoes of the richest colorings and represented the most alluring scenes. Around the cornices, relics of imperial Rome, nymphs and satyrs in bas-relief danced hand in hand, wild woodland creatures, exultant in all the luxuriance of beauty and redundancy of strength; and yonder, where the lamp cast its softest glow upon her, stood a marble statue of Venus Anadyomené, her attitude expressive of dormant passion lulled by the languid insolence of power and tinged with an imperious coquetry, the most alluring of all her charms.

Tristan moved uneasily in his seat, wishing that he had not come, wondering how he had allowed himself to be thus beguiled, wondering what it was all about, when a rustling of the hangings caused him to turn his head. There was no more attraction now in bounding nymph or marble enchantress. The life-like statue of Venus was no longer the masterpiece of the chamber for there, in the doorway, appeared Theodora herself.

Tristan rose to his feet, and thus they stood, confronting each other in the subdued light—the hostess and her guest—the assailant and the assailed.

Theodora trembled in every limb, yet she should have remained the calmer of the two, inasmuch as hers could scarcely have been the agitation of surprise. Such a step indeed, as she had taken, she had not ventured upon without careful calculation of its far reaching effect. Determined to make this obstinate stranger pliable to her desires, to instill a poison into his veins which must, in time, work her will, she had deliberately commanded Persephoné to conduct him to this bower, the seductive air of which no one had yet withstood.

Theodora was the first to speak, though for once she hardly knew how to begin. For the man who stood before her was not to be moulded by a glance and would match his will against her own. Such methods as she would have employed under different circumstances would here and now utterly fail in their intent. For once she must not appear the dominant factor in Rome, rather a woman wronged by fate, mankind and report. Let her beauty do the rest.

"I have sent for you," she said, "because something tells me that I can rely implicitly on your secrecy. From what I have seen of you, I believe you are incapable of betraying a trust."

Theodora's words had the intended effect. Tristan, expecting reproach for his intentional slight of her advances, was thrown off his guard by the appeal to his honor. His confusion at the sight of the woman's beauty, enhanced by her gorgeous surroundings, was such that he did but bow in acknowledgment of this tribute to his integrity.

Theodora watched him narrowly, never relinquishing his gaze, which wandered unconsciously over her exquisite form, draped in a diaphanous gown which left the snowy arms and hands, the shoulders and the round white throat exposed.

"I have been told that you have accepted service with the Lord Alberic, who has offered to you, a stranger, the most important trust in his power to bestow."

Tristan bowed assent.

"The Lord Alberic has rewarded me, far beyond my deserts, for ever so slight a service," he replied, without referring to the nature of the service.

Theodora nodded.

"And you—a stranger in the city, without counsellor—without friend. Great as the honor is, which the Senator has conferred upon you—great are the pitfalls that lurk in the hidden places. Doubtlessly, the Lord Alberic did not bestow his trust unworthily. And, in enjoining above all things watchfulness—he has doubtlessly dropped a word of warning regarding his kinswoman," here Theodora dropped her lids, as if she were reluctantly touching upon a distasteful subject, "the Lady Theodora?"

As suddenly as she had dropped her lids as suddenly her eyes sank into the unwary eyes of Tristan. The scented atmosphere of the room and the woman's nearness were slowly creeping into his brain.

"The Lord Alberic did refer to the Lady Theodora," he stammered, loth to tell an untruth, and equally loth to wound this beautiful enigma before him.

"I thought so!" Theodora interposed with a smile, without permitting him to commit himself. "He has warned you against me. Admit it, my Lord Tristan. He has put you on your guard. And yet—I fain would be your friend—"

"The Lord Alberic seems to count you among his enemies," Tristan replied. The mention of an accepted fact could not, to his mind, be construed into betraying a confidence.

Theodora smiled sadly.

"The Lord Alberic has been beguiled into this sad attitude by one who was ever my foe, perchance, even his. Time will tell. But it was not to speak of him that I summoned you hither. It is because I would appear lovable in your eyes. It is, because I am not indifferent to your opinion, my Lord Tristan. Am I not rash, foolish, impulsive, in thus placing myself in the power of one who may even now be planning my undoing? One who on a previous occasion so grievously misjudged my motives as to wound me so cruelly?"

The woman's appeal knocked at the portals of Tristan's heart. Would she but state her true purpose, relieve this harrowing suspense. She had propounded the question with a deepening color, and glances that conveyed a tale. And it was a question somewhat difficult to answer.

At last he spoke, stammeringly, incoherently:

"I shall try to prove myself worthy of the Lady Theodora's confidence."

She seemed somewhat disappointed at the coldness of his answer, nevertheless her quick perception showed her where she had scored a point, in making an inroad upon his heart. And her critical eye could not but approve of the proud attitude he assumed, the look that had come into his face.

She edged a little closer to him and continued in a subdued tone.

"A woman is always lonely and helpless—no matter what may be her station. How liable we are to be deceived or—misjudged. But I knew from the first that I could trust you. Do you remember when we first met in the Navona?"

Again the warm crimson of the cheek, again the speaking flash from those luring eyes. Tristan's heart began to beat with a strange sensation of excitement and surprise. To love this wonder of all women—to be loved by her in return—life would indeed be one mad delirium.

"How could I forget it?" he said, more warmly than he intended, meeting her gaze. "It was on the day when I arrived in Rome."

Her eyes beamed on him more benevolently than ever.

"I saw you again at Santa Maria of the Aventine. I sent for you," she said, with drooping lids, "because I so wanted some one to confide in. I have no counsellor,—no champion—no friend. The object of hatred to the rabble which stones those to-day before whom it cringed yesterday—I am paying the penalty of the name I bear—kinship to one no longer among the living. But you scorned my messenger. Why did you?"

She regarded Tristan with expectant, almost imploring eyes. She saw him struggling for adequate utterance. Continuing, she held out to him her beautiful hands. Her tone was all appeal.

"I want you to feel that Theodora is your friend. That you may turn to her in any perplexity that may beset you, that you may call upon her for counsel whenever you are in doubt and know not what to do. And oh! I want you to know above all things how much you could be to me, did you but trust—had not the drop of poison instilled by the Senator set you against the one woman who would make you great, envied above all men on earth!"

Tristan bent over Theodora's hands and kissed them. Cool and trusting, yet with a firm grasp, they encircled his burning palms and their whiteness caused his senses to reel.

"In what manner can I be of service to the Lady Theodora?" he spoke at last, unable to let go of those wonderful hands that sent the hot blood hurtling to his brain.

Theodora's face was very close to his.

As she spoke, her perfumed breath softly fanned his cheeks.

She spoke with well-studied hesitancy, like a child that, in preferring an overbold request, fears denial in the very utterance.

"It is a small thing, I would ask," she said in her wonderfully melodious voice. "I would once again visit the places where I have spent the happy days of my childhood, the galleries and chambers of the Emperor's Tomb. You start, my Lord Tristan! Perchance this speech may sound strange to the ears of one who, though newly arrived in Rome, has heard but vituperations showered upon the head of a defenceless woman, who, if not better, is at least not worse than the rest of her kind. Yes—" she continued, returning the pressure of his fingers and noting, not without inward satisfaction, a soft gleam that had dispelled the sterner look in his eyes, "those were days of innocence and peace, broken only when the older sister, my equal in beauty, began to regard me as a possible rival. Stung by her taunts I leaped to her challenge and the fight for the dominion of Rome was waged between us with all the hot passion of our blood, Marozia conquered, but Death stood by unseen to crown her victory. The Mount of Cloisters is my asylum. The gates of the Emperor's Tomb are sealed to me forever more. Why should Alberic, disregarding the ties of blood, fear a woman—unless he hath deeply wronged her, even as he has wronged another who wears the crown of thorns upon earth?"

Theodora paused, her lids half-shut as if to repress a tear; in reality to scan the face of him who found her tale most strange indeed.

And, verily, Tristan was beginning to feel that he could not depend upon himself much longer. The subdued lights, the heavy perfume, the room itself, the seductive beauty of this sorceress so near to him that her breath fanned his cheeks, the touch of her hands, which had not relinquished his own, were making wild havoc with his senses and reason.

Like many a gentle and inexperienced nature, Tristan shrank from offending a woman's delicacy, by even appearing to question the truth of her words, and he doubted not but that here was a woman who had been sinned against much more than she had sinned, a woman capable of gentler, nobler impulses than were credited to her in the common reckoning. It required indeed a powerful constraint upon his feelings not to give way to the starved impulse that drove him to forget past, present and future in her embrace.

A sad smile played about the small crimson mouth as Theodora, with a sigh, continued:

"I have quaffed the joys of life. There is nothing that has remained untasted. And yet—I am not happy. The fires of unrest drive me hither and thither. After years of fiercest conflict, with those of my own sex and age, who consider Rome the lawful prey of any one that may usurp Marozia's fateful inheritance, I have had a glimpse of Heaven—a Heaven that perchance is not for me. Yet it aroused the desire for peace—happiness—love! Yes, my Lord Tristan, love! For though I have searched for it in every guise, I found it not. Will the hour every toll—even for me? Deem you, my Lord Tristan, that even one so guilt lost as Theodora might be loved?"

"How were it possible," he stammered, "for mortal eyes to resist such loveliness?"

His words sounded stilted in his ears. Yet he knew if he permitted the impulse to master him he would be swept away by the torrent.

The woman also knew, and woman-like she felt that the poison rankled in his veins. She must give it time to work. She must not precipitate a scene that might leave him sobered, when the fumes had cleared from his brain.

Putting all the witchery of her beauty into her words she said, with a tinge of sadness:

"I fear I am trespassing, my Lord Tristan. It is so long, since I have unveiled the depths of my heart. Forget the request I have made. It may conflict with your loyalty to my Lord Alberic. I shall try to foster the memories of the place which I dare not enter—"

She had ventured all upon the last throw, and she had conquered.

"Nay, Lady Theodora," Tristan interposed, with a seriousness that even staggered the woman. "There is no such clause or condition in the agreement between the Lord Alberic and myself. It is true," he added in a solemn tone, "he has warned me of you, as his enemy. Report speaks ill of you. Nevertheless I believe you."

"I thank you, my Lord Tristan," she said, releasing his hands. "Theodora never forgets a service. Three nights hence I am giving a feast to my friends. You will not fail me?"

"I am happy to know," he said, "that the Lady Theodora thinks kindly of me. I shall not fail her. And now"—he added, genuine regret in his tone—"will the Lady Theodora permit me to depart? The hour waxes late and there is much to be done ere the morrow's dawn."

Theodora clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared between the curtains.

"Farewell, my Lord Tristan. We shall speak of this again," she said, beaming upon him with all the seductive fire of her dark eyes, and he, bowing, took his leave.

When Persephoné returned, she was as much puzzled at the inscrutable smile that played about her mistress' lips as she had been at Tristan's abstracted state of mind, for, hardly noting her presence, he had walked in silence beside her to the gate, and had there taken silent leave.—

---

[CHAPTER VI]
THE LURE OF THE ABYSS

The sun had sunk to rest in fleecy clouds of crimson and gold.

The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy enveloped hill and dale, bathing in its effulgence the groves, palaces and ruins of the Eternal City. The huge pile of the Colosseum was bathed in its rosy glow, raising itself in serene majesty towards the beaming night sky.

A few hours later a great change had come over the heavens. The wind had sprung up and had driven the little downy clouds of sunset into a great, black mass, which it again tore into flying tatters that it swept before it. The moon rose and raced through the dun and silver. Below it, in the vast spaces of the deserted amphitheatre, from whose vomitories pale ghosts seemed to flit, the big boulders and rain-left pools looked dim and misty. Night had cast her leper's cloak on nature and the moon seemed the leprous face.

Deepest silence reigned, broken only by the occasional hoot of an owl, or the swishing of a bat that whirled its crazy flight in and out the labyrinthine corridors.

By the largest of these boulders stood the dark cloaked form of a man. As the moon-thrown shadows of the clouds swept over him and the rude rock by which he stood looking up at the sky, his black mantle flapped in the wind and clung to his limbs, making him look even taller than he was.

At the feet of Basil cowered the huge Molossian hound. As the wind grew stronger and the clouds above assumed more fantastic shapes, it raised its head and gave voice to a low whine. On the distant hillocks a myriad dusky flames seemed to writhe and hiss and dart through tinted moon-gleams.

Three times he whistled—and in the misty, moonlit expanse countless forms, as weird as himself, seemed to rise and form a great circle about him.

Were they the creatures of his brain which had at last given way in the excitement of the hour? Were they phantoms of mist and moon, wreathing round him from the desolate marshes? Or were they real beings of flesh and blood, congregations of crime and despair, mad with the misery of a starving century, the horrors of serfdom and oppression that had united in the great reel of a Witches' Sabbat?

Round him they circled, at first slowly,—like the curls of a marsh, then faster and ever faster, till his eyes could scarcely follow them as they rotated about him in their horrible dance of madness and sin.

Black clouds raced over the moon. The reddish gleam of a forked tongue of fire illumined the dark heavens, and thunder went pealing down the hills. Suddenly out of the underbrush arose a black form, about the height and breadth of a man, but without the distinct outlines of one. Basil's face grew white as death, and his gaze became fixed as he clutched at the rock for support. But the next moment he seemed to gain his reassurance from the knowledge that he had seen this phantom before. The dog lay at his feet and continued its low tremulous whine.

"You have kept the tryst," gibbered the bent form as it slowly approached, supporting itself upon a crooked staff of singular height.

"Else were I not the man to compel fate to do my bidding," responded the Grand Chamberlain. "Fear can have no part in the compact which binds us. I have live things under my feet that clog my steps and grow more stubborn day by day."—

"Deem you, you can keep your footing in the black lobbies of hell?" gibbered the cowled form. "For you will need all your courage, if you would reach the goal!"

Basil, for a moment, faced his shadowy interlocutor in silence. There was a darker light in his eyes when he spoke.

"Give me but that which my soul desires and I shall run the gauntlet unflinchingly. I shall brace my courage to the dread experiment."

A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shuddering anxiety.

"You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any man now living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soul will travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tide rolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washes over the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glow like living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew. Do you persist?"

"Give me what I desire—"

"Ay—so say they all—but to grovel in the dust before the Unknown Presence which they have defied."

"Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turned to the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch his mantle.

A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop his arm with a cry of pain.

Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another.

Distant thunder growled and died among the hills.

"I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at the destruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed the burning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stood upon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy."

The voice of the speaker died to silence.

Basil's hand went to his head, as if he wished to assure himself whether he was awake or in the throes of some mad dream.

It is a narrow boundary line, that divides the two great realms of sanity and madness. And the limits are as restless as those of two countries divided from each other by a network of shifting rivers. What belonged to the one overnight may belong to the other to-morrow.

An overmastering dread had seized upon Basil at the speech of the uncanny apparition. Was not he, too, pushing his excursions now into the one realm, now into the other? And who would know in which of the two to seek for him?

"Have you indeed wandered upon earth ever since those days?" he stammered, once more slave to his superstition.

The apparition nodded.

"I have drunk deep from the black wells of despair. I have raised the shadowy altars of him who was cast out of the heavens, higher and higher, till they almost touch the throne of the Father."

"Your master then is Lucifer—"

"Cannot the Fiend as well as God live incarnate in human clay? Is not the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? Why should not Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, be Hell's incarnation?"—

"What then must I do to deserve the crimson aureole?"

"Espouse the cause of him who rules the shadows. He will give to you what your soul desires. One of the shadowy congregation that rules the world through fear, make quick wings for Time, that crawls through eternity like a monstrous snake, while with starved desire your eyes glare at the fleeting things of life—dominion, power and love, that you may snatch from fate! Only by becoming one of us can your soul slake its thirst. Speak—for my time is brief—"

When Basil turned towards the bent form of the speaker his gaze fell upon a gleaming knife which Bessarion had produced from under the loose folds of his gown.

For a moment the two stood face to face. Neither spoke, each seemingly intent upon fathoming the thoughts of the other. The wind hissed and screamed through the corridors of the Colosseum.

It was Basil who broke the silence.

"What is it, you want?"

"Bare your left arm!"

There was a natural hollow in the rock, that the weather had scooped out in the stone altar.

Basil obeyed.

The gibbering voice rose again above the silence.

"Hold it over the basin!"

The lightnings twisted and streamed like silvery adders through the dark vaults of the heavens, and terrific peals of thunder shook the shuddering world in its foundations.

The bent form raised the knife.

Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone.

Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with a claw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm.

"At midnight—in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus—you will stand face to face with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more.

The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as if the earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock.

Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian hound rose up from the ground as soon as the adept of the black arts had disappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into its master's face.

Suddenly it uttered a growl.

At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched at the feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a panther he had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and even Basil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into the hairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy and despatch were essential to the success of a venture.

Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemed enhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from under a broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessed prodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favor of him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own.

This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain nobleman in the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See.

Basil looked up at the moon which just then emerged from the shadow of a cloud. Then he gave a nod of satisfaction.

"Your promptness argues well for your success," he turned to his runner who was cowering at his feet, the ashen face with the blinking and inflamed eyes raised to his master. "Know you the road to southward, my good Daoud?"

The Moor gave a nod and Basil proceeded.

"You must depart this very night. Take the road that leads by Benevento to the Shrines of the Archangel. You will overtake the Senator and deliver into his hands this token. You will return forthwith and bring to me—his answer. Do I make myself quite clear to your understanding, my good Daoud?"

The Moor fell prostrate and touched Basil's buskin with his forehead.

"Up!" the latter spurned the kneeling brute. "To-morrow night must find you in the Witches' City."

With these words he placed into the Moor's hand a small article, carefully tied and sealed.

The twain exchanged a mute glance of mutual understanding, then Daoud gave a bound, darted forward and shot away like an arrow from the bow. Almost instantly he was out of sight.

The hound bounded after him but, obedient to his master's call, instantly returned to the latter's feet.

For some time Basil remained near the rock where the weird ceremony had taken place.

"The Rubicon is passed," he muttered. "The stars—or the abyss."

Then, slowly quitting the stupendous ruins of the Amphitheatre, he took the direction of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.

---

[CHAPTER VII]
THE FACE IN THE PANEL

On the following day Tristan entered upon his duties as captain of the Senator's guard.

The first person upon whom he chanced on his rounds at the Lateran was the Grand Chamberlain, who inquired affably how his penitences were progressing and expressed the hope that he had received final absolution, and that his sins would not weigh too heavily upon his soul. Basil commended him for his zeal in the cause of the Senator, hinting incidentally that his duties between the Lateran and Castel San Angelo need not deprive him of the society of the fair Roman ladies, who would welcome the stranger from Provence and would doubtlessly enmesh his heart, if it were not well guarded. He then proceeded to caution Tristan with respect to his exalted prisoner. Numerous attempts at abduction had been made from time to time, Tristan having, by his prowess and daring, prevented the last, emanating doubtlessly from the Pontiff's nearest kith and kin. The men under him could be fully relied upon. Nevertheless, it behooved him to be circumspect.

After a time Basil departed, and Tristan went about his business, inspecting the guard and familiarizing himself with the place where he was to keep his first watch.

The level beams of the evening sun filled the Basilica of St. John in Laterano. There were pearl lights and lights of sapphire; falling radiances of emerald and blood-red; vague translucent greens, that seemed to tremble under spiral clouds of incense.

Now the sun was sinking behind Mount Janiculum. The clouds at the zenith of the heavens were rose-hued, but it was growing dark in the valleys, and the great church began to take on sombre hues. It seemed to frown upon him, to warn him not to enter, an impression he was long afterwards to remember, as he strode through the high-vaulted corridors.

He hesitated, till the sound of a distant chant reached his ear. With a sort of fascination he could not account for, he watched the advance of the slowly gathering gloom, as an increasing greyness stole into the chapels.

Evening was about to take the veil of night.

The light left the stained-glass windows and the church grew darker and darker. The altar steps lay now in purple shadows that were growing deeper and denser each moment.

Shadowy forms seemed to be moving about in the sanctuaries. Soon a monk entered with a taper, lighting the lights before some remote shrines. Tristan could not distinguish his features, for the light was very dim. Yet it enabled him to see that there were a few belated worshippers in the church.

After a time the great nave was deserted. As the lone monk passed quickly through a sphere of thin light, Tristan gave a start. It seemed a ghost in a cassock that had vanished in the sacristy. He told himself that the impression was absurd, but he could not throw it off. He had caught a momentary glimpse of a face that had no human likeness, and the way in which the cassock had flapped about the limbs of the fleeting form seemed to suggest that it clothed a frame that had lost its flesh.

Superstitious fear began to creep over him. He felt that he must seek the open, escape the haunting incense-saturated pall, these dim sepulchral chapels. Such light as there was, save what emanated from the candles on the altar, came from a stone lamp which cast its glimmer on the vanishing form.

In every corner of the vast nave now lay fast gathering darkness. The figures of the saints seemed vague and formless. The altar loomed dim in the shadows.

All these things Tristan noted.

The whole interior of the church was now steeped in the dense pall of night, illumined only by the faint radiance of the lamp upon the altar, which seemed rather to intensify than to lift the gloom.

A faint footfall was audible behind the carven screen, near the entrance to the chapels. A figure, almost lost in the gloom, glided into the nave, and shadows were falling about him like thin veils.

It was an unusual hour for monks to be abroad. None the less, he seemed sure of himself, for he proceeded without hesitation to the altar, shrouded as it was in utter darkness, but for the light of one faint taper, which gleamed afar, like a star in the nocturnal heavens, driving the gloom a few paces from the carven stone. There the shrouded form seemed to melt into the very pall of night that weighed heavily upon the time-stained walls of the Mother Church of Rome.

At first Tristan thought it was some belated penitent seeking forgiveness for his sins, but when the dark-robed form did not return he strode towards the altar to see if he might perchance be of assistance to him.

When Tristan reached the altar steps he could discover no trace of a human being, though he searched every nook and corner and peered into every chapel, examined every shrine.

Seized with a strange restiveness he began to pace up and down before the altar steps. He was far from feeling at ease. He remembered the warning of the Grand Chamberlain. He remembered the strange tales he had heard whispered of the Pontiff's prison house.

Tristan suddenly paused.

He thought he heard sibilant whispers and the low murmur of voices from behind the screen at the eastern transept of the Capella, and at once he began assembling the things in his mind which might beset him in the hour of darkness.

The Chapel of the Most Holy Saviour of the Holy Stairs, the Scala Santa of the present day, adjoins the Lateran Church. At the period of which we write it was still the private chapel of the popes in the Patriarchium, and was called the Sancta Sanctorum on account of the great number of precious relics it enshrines.

To this chapel Tristan directed his steps, oppressed by some mysterious sense of evil. By a judicious disposition of the men under his command he had, after a careful survey of the premises, placed them in such a manner that it would be impossible for any one to gain access to the stairs leading to the Pontiff's chamber.

Had it been a hallucination of his senses conjured up by his sudden fear?

Not a sound broke the stillness. Only the echoes of his own footsteps reverberated uncannily from the worn mosaics of the floor. In the dim distance of the corridors he saw a shadow moving to and fro. It was the guard before the entrance to a side-chapel of the Basilica.

What caused Tristan to pause in the night gloom of the corridor leading to the Pontifical Chapel he did not know. He seemed as under a strange spell. At a distance from him of some five feet, in the decorated wall, there was a dark panel some two feet in height and of corresponding breadth, looking obliquely towards the Pontifical Chapel. The panel contained a small round opening, a spy-hole which communicated with a secret chamber in the thickness of the wall.

A slight rustling noise came from behind the masonry. Tristan heard it quite distinctly. It suggested the passing of naked feet over marble.

Suddenly, noiselessly the panel parted.

A sudden gleam of white, blinding light shot into the chapel like a spear of silver.

Tristan paused with a start, looking swiftly and inquiringly at the black slit in the wall and as he did so the spear of light shifted a little in its passing.

A face, white with the pallor of death, ghastly and hideous as a corpse that has retained upon its set features the agony of dying, peered out from blackness into blackness.

A tremor shook Tristan's frame from head to toe. He could not have cried out, had he wished to. He felt as one grazed by a lightning bolt. Then, in a flash that made his heart and soul shudder within him, he knew.

He had seen looking at him a face—the clean shaven face of a man. But it was not human. It bore the terrible stigmata of the unquenchable fire; an abominable vision of the lust that cannot be satiated, the utter, unconquerable, fiendish malevolence of Hell. A harsh, raven-like croak broke the stillness, and at the sound of that cry the terrible face vanished with the swiftness of a trick. Instead, a long arm, clothed in a black sleeve, stole through the opening. A flash, keen as that of the lightning, cut the air and a dagger struck the mosaic floor at Tristan's feet with such force that its point snapped after shattering the stone, drawing fire from the impact.

Bounding back, Tristan uttered a shrill cry of terror, but when he looked in the direction of the panel only dim dun dusk met his eyes.

Rushing frantically from the corridor he now called with all his might. His outcries brought the guards to the scene. Briefly, incoherently, almost mad with terror, he told his tale. They listened with an air of amazement in which surprise held no small share. Then they accompanied him back to the chapel.

Arriving near the spot he was about to point to the dagger, to corroborate his wild tale. But the dagger had disappeared. Only the shattered marble of the floor lent testimony and credence to his words.

On the following morning an outcry of horror arose from all quarters of Rome.

On the night which preceded it, the Holy Host had been taken from the Pontifical Chapel in the Lateran.

---

[CHAPTER VIII]
THE SHADOW OF ASRAEL

It was ten in the morning.

Deep silence reigned in the strange walled garden on the Pincian Hill that surrounded the marble villa of the Grand Chamberlain. Only the murmur of the city below and the soft sounds of bells from tower and campanile seemed to break the dreamlike stillness as they began to toll for High Mass.

In a circular chamber lighted only by lamps, for there were no windows, and daylight never penetrated there, before an onyx table covered with strange globes and philtres, sat Basil.

The walls of the chamber were of wood stained purple. The far wall was hidden by shelves on which were many rolls of vellum and papyrus, spoils of pagan libraries of the past. There were the works of monks from all the monasteries of Europe, illuminated by master hands, the black letter pages glowing with red and gold, almost priceless even then. In one corner of the room stood an iron chest, secured by locks. What this contained no one even dared to guess.

As the chimes from churches and convents reached his ears, Basil's face paled. Something began to stir in the dark unfathomable eyes as some unknown thing stirs in deep water. Some nameless being was looking out of those windows of the soul. Yet the rest of the face was unruffled and expressionless, and the contrast was so horrible that a spectator would have shrank away, cold fear gripping his heart, and perhaps a cry upon his lips.

Basil had closed the heavy bronze doors behind him when he had entered from the atrium. The floor of colored marbles was flooded with the light from the bronze lamps. Before him was a short passage, hardly more than an alcove, terminating in a door of cedarwood behind a purple curtain.

In the dull yellow gleam of the lamps the chamber seemed cold, full of chill and musty air.

In a moment however the lamps seemed to burn more brightly, as Basil's eyes became adjusted to their lights.

There was the silence of the tomb. The lamps burnt without a flicker, for there was not a breath of air to disturb their steady glow. The plan of the room, its yellow lights, its silence, its entire lack of correspondence with the outside world, was Basil's own. He had designed it as a port, as it were, whence to put out to sea upon the tide of his ever-changing moods in the black barque of sin.

For some time he remained alone in the silent room, dreaming and brooding over greatness and power, that terrible megalomania that is the last and rarest madness of all.

He had read of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, of Heliogabalus, whose madness passed the bounds of the imaginable. Like gold and purple clouds, bursting with sombre light and power, they had passed over Rome and were gone.

Then thoughts of the popes came to him, those supreme rulers of the temporal and spiritual world whose dominion had been so superb, since they first began to crown the emperors, one hundred and thirty-five years ago.

In a monstrous and swiftly moving panorama they passed through a brain that worked as if it were packed in ice. And yet one and all had gone into the dark. The power of none had been lasting and complete.

But into his reverie stole a secret glow, into his blood an intense, ecstatic quickening. For them the hour had tolled. Each step in life was but one nearer the grave. Not so was it to be with him.

A black fire began to burn round his heart, coiling there like a serpent, as he thought of the illumination that was his, the promise he had received—deep down in the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb and again in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. And he had fallen down and worshipped, had given his soul to Darkness and abjured the Light.

Satan should rule again on earth. For this had been revealed to him by the High Priest of Satan himself, then in a vision by the Lord of Evil. To penetrate the mysteries of Hell with his whole heart and soul, to strike chill terror into the hearts of those who worshipped at the altars of Christ, had become Basil's ambition for which he would live and die.

Basil sat dreaming and gloating over his coming glory; a glory in which the woman whose beauty had stung him with maddening desire should share, even if he had to drag her before the dark throne upon which sat the Unspeakable Presence. The yellow light of the lamps fell upon his unnatural and mask-like face as he sat rigid in his chair hypnotized by Hell.

Christ had thrown his great Cross upon the feasts and banquets of the gods. On his head was a crown of thorns and the Stigmata upon his hands and feet. And the goblets of red gold had lost their brightness. The pagan gods were stricken dumb. They had faded away in vapor and were gone.

And with them the fierce joy of living had left the world. Christ reigned upon earth, implanting conscience in the souls of men, that robbed ecstasy of its fruition and infused the most delicious cup touched with the Aliquid Amari of the poet.

Basil paced the narrow confines of the room, and from his lips came the opening stanza of that dreadful parody of the Good Friday hymn sung by the votaries of Satan: "Vexilla Regis Prodeunt Inferni."

Already the banners of the advancing hosts were in the sky. Soon—soon would he appear himself—the Lord of Darkness!

The room suddenly grew very chill, as if the three dread winds of Cocytus were blowing through the chamber.

There was a slim rod of copper suspended from the wall, close to the couch of dull grey damask upon which he had been reclining. He pulled it and somewhere away in the villa a gong sounded. A moment later a drab man, lean as a skeleton and bald as an egg, with slanting eyes in an ashen face and a stooping gait, came gliding noiselessly into the lamplit room. He wore a long black cassock, which covered his fleshless form from head to toe.

"Has no one called?" Basil turned to his factotum.

"A stranger," came the sepulchral reply. "He bade me give you this!"

Basil took the scroll which his famulus handed to him and cut the cord.

A fiendish smile passed over his face and lighted up the dark, sinister eyes. But quickly as the mood had come it left. It fell from him as a dropped cloak.

He stood upright, supporting himself on the onyx table, while Horus, who only understood in a dull dim way his master's moods, assisting him in all his villainies, but confessing his own share to a household priest, stood impassively by.

"Give me some wine!" Basil turned to the sinister Major Domo, and the latter disappeared and returned with a jug of Malvasian.

The Grand Chamberlain grasped the jug which Horus had brought him and held it with shaking fingers to his mouth. When he had drank deep he dismissed his famulus, struck a flint and burnt the scroll to pallid ashes. Then he staggered out into the hall of colored marbles and through it to the garden doors.

The bronze gates trembled as they swung back upon their hinges, and as the full noon of the quiet garden burst upon Basil's eyes he fancied he saw the fold of a dark robe disappear among the cypresses.

And now the hot air of high noon wrapped him round with its warm southern life, flowing over the lithe body within the silken doublet, drawing away the inward darkness and the vaulting flames within his soul and reminding his sensuous nature that the future held gigantic promise of love and power.

The great tenor and alto bells of St. John in Lateran were beating the echoes to silver far away. The roofs and palaces, domes and towers of Rome, were bathed in sunlight as he advanced to the embrasure in the wall and once more surveyed the city.

The heat shimmered down and, through the quivering sunlit air, the colors of the buildings shone like pebbles at the bottom of a pool and the white ruins glowed like a mirage of the desert.

An hour later, regardless of the vertical sun rays that beat down upon the tortuous streets of the city with unabated fervor, the Grand Chamberlain rode through the streets of Rome, attended by a group of men-at-arms with the crest of the Broken Spear in a Field of Azure embroidered upon their doublets.

As the cavalcade swept through the crowded streets, with their pilgrims from all parts of the world, the religious in their habits, men-at-arms, flower-sellers, here and there the magnificent chariot of a cardinal, many of the people lowered their eyes as Basil cantered past on his black Neapolitan charger, trapped with crimson. More than one made the sign of the horn, to avert the spell of the evil eye.

When Basil reached the Lateran he found a captain of the noble guard with two halberdiers in their unsightly liveries guarding the doors. They saluted and Basil inquired whether the new captain of the guard was within.

"The Lord Tristan is within," came the reply, and Basil entered, motioning to his escort to await his return outside.

The Grand Chamberlain traversed several anterooms, speaking to one or the other of the senatorial guard, and on every face he read consternation and fear. Little groups of priests stood together in corners, whispering among each other; the whole of the Lateran was aroused as by a secret dread. Such deeds, though they were known to have occurred, were never spoken of, and the priests of the various churches that had suffered desecration wisely kept their own counsel.

In this, the darkest age in the history of Rome, when crime and lust and murder lurked in every corner, an outrage such as this struck every soul with horror and awe. It was unthinkable, unspeakable almost, suggesting dark mysteries and hidden infamies of Hell, which caused the blood to run cold and the heart to freeze.

When Basil had made his way through the crowded corridors, receiving homage, though men looked askance at him as he passed, he came to a chamber usually reserved for a waiting room in times when the Pontiff received foreign envoys or members of the priesthood and nobility; a privilege from which the unfortunate prisoner in the Lateran was to be forever debarred.

Basil entered this chamber, giving orders that he was to be in no wise disturbed until he called and those outside heard him lock and bar the door from within.

In the exact centre of the wall, reaching within two feet of the ground, there was a large picture of St. Sebastian, barbarously painted by some unknown artist.

Basil approached the picture and pressed upon the flat frame with all his strength. There was a sudden click, a whirring, as of the wheels of a clock. Then the picture swung inward, revealing a circular stairway of stone, mounting upward. Without replacing the panel door, Basil mounted the stairs for nearly a hundred steps, until he came to a door upon which he beat with the hilt of his poniard.

An answering knock came from within, and the door opened. Basil entered a small chamber, lighted from above by a window in a small dome.

A bat-like figure stood before a table covered with strange manuscripts. As Basil entered, a thin black arm emerged from the folds of the gown, which the inmate of the chamber wore. Then, with a quick bird-like movement, an immensely thin hand twisted like a claw, wrinkled, yellow and of incredible age, was stretched out toward the newcomer.

On the second finger of this claw was a certain ring. Basil bent and kissed the ring. There was another deft and almost imperceptible movement. When the hand reappeared the ring was gone.

"It has been done?" Basil turned to the dark-robed form in bated whispers.

The voice that answered seemed to come from a great distance. The lips in the waxen face scarcely moved. They parted, that was all. Yet the words were audible and distinct.

"It was done. Last night."

"You were not seen?"

"I wore the mask."

"Is it here?" Basil queried, his eyes flickering with a faint reflection of that hate which had blazed in them earlier in the day.

"It is not here."

"Where is it?"

"You shall know to-night!"

The light faded out of Basil's eyes.

"What of the new captain?"

"His presence is a menace."

In Basil's eyes gleamed a sombre fire.

"I, too, owe him a grudge. In good time!"

"The time is Now!"

"Patience!" replied the Grand Chamberlain. "He will work his own undoing. We dare not harm him yet."

"Only a miracle saved him last night."

"Are there not other churches in Rome?"—

"Ay!" mouthed the black form. "But the time of the great sacrifice draws near—"

"I knew not it was so near at hand," interposed Basil with a start.

"The Becco Notturno demands a bride!"

"How am I to help you in these matters?"

"Am I to counsel the Lord Basil?" sneered the shape. "You drew the crimson ball."

"When is it to be?"

"Three weeks from to-night. Mark you—a stainless dove!"

Basil nodded, an evil smile upon his lips.

"It shall be as you say! As for that other—I am minded to try his mettle—"

"So be it!" said the shape. "Leave me now! You will hear from me. My familiars are everywhere."

Without another word Basil arose and left the chamber. In the corridor below he met Tristan.

"I know all," he cut short the speech of the new captain of the guard. "All Rome is full of it. How did it happen? And where?"

"Attracted by a noise as of slippered feet passing over marble, I entered the corridor of the Sacred Stairs, when one of the panels parted. A devilish apparition stood within, throwing the beam of its lantern into the chapel. When a chance ray of light disclosed my presence the shape of darkness hurled a poniard. It missed me, thanks be to Our Lady, struck the mosaic of the floor and broke in two."

"You have the pieces?" Basil queried affably and with much concern.

"I ran to the end of the gallery, shouting to my men," Tristan replied. "When we returned the blade had disappeared."

"Where was it?" Basil queried with much concern and soon they faced the shattered mosaic.

Basil examined the spot minutely.

"From yonder panel, you say?" he turned to Tristan.

"The third from the Capella," came the ready reply.

"Have you searched the premises?"

"From cellar to garret."—

"And discovered nothing?"

"Nothing."

"What of the panel?"

"It defies our combined efforts."

"Strange, indeed."

Basil strode to the wall and struck the spot indicated by Tristan with the hilt of his poniard. Then he tested the wall on either side.

"Can your ear detect any difference in sound?"

A negative gesture came in response, and with it a puzzled look passed into Tristan's eyes.

"Have you seen the Pontiff?"

"We reported the matter to His Holiness."

"And?"

"His Holiness raised his eyes to heaven and said: 'Even God's Vicar has no jurisdiction in Hell!'"

"Was that all he said?"

"That was all!"

There was a silence during which Basil seemed to commune with himself.

"It is indeed a matter of grave concern," he said at last. "Treason stalks everywhere. I will send for my Spanish Captain, Don Garcia. He may be of assistance to you."

And Basil turned and walked down the corridor.

After a time Tristan walked out upon the terrace looking toward the Cœlian Hill.

A brilliant light beat upon domes and spires and pinnacles, and flooded the august ruins of the Cæsars on the distant Palatine and the thousand temples of the Holy Cross with scintillating radiance which poured down from the intense blue of heaven.—

The long lights of the afternoon were shifting towards the eventide, giving place to a limpid and colorless light that silvered the adjacent olive groves.

Tristan roused himself with a start. The sense of moving like a ghost among a world of ghosts had left him. He was once more awake and aware. But even now his sorrow, his fears, his hopes of winning again to some safe harbor in the storm tossed Odyssey of his life, were numbed. They lay heavy within him, but without urgency or appeal.

What did it matter after all? Life was a little thing, a forlorn minstrel that evoked melancholy strains from a pipe of oaten straw. Life was a little thing, nor death a great one. For his part he would not be loth to take his poppies and fall asleep.

At one time or another such moods must come to all of us and be endured. We must enter into the middle country, that dull Sahara of the soul, a broad belt of barren land where no angels seem to walk by our side, nor can the false voices of demons lure us to our harm.

This is the land where we are imprisoned by the deeds of others and never by our own. What we do ourselves will send us to Heaven or to Hell; but not to the middle country where the plains of disillusion are.

At last the sunset came.

The ashen color of the olive-trees flashed out into silver, the undulating peaks of the Sabine Mountains became faintly flushed and phantom fair, as in a tempest of fire the sun sank to rest. The groves of ilex and arbutus seemed to tremble with delight, as the long red heralds touched their topmost boughs.

The whole landscape seemed to smile a farewell to departing day. The chimes of the Angelus trembled on the purple dusk.

Night came on apace.

Tristan re-entered the Lateran Basilica, set the watch and arranged with Don Garcia to spend the night in the sacristy, while Don Garcia was to guard the approaches to the Pontifical Chapel to prevent a recurrence of the horrible sacrilege of the preceding night.

One by one the worshippers left the vast nave of the church. After a time the sacristans closed the heavy bronze doors and extinguished the lights, all but the one upon the altar.

When they, too, had departed, and deepest silence filled the sacred spaces, Tristan emerged from a side chapel and took his station near the entrance to the sacristy, where, on the preceding night, he had seen the shadow disappear.

How long he had been there in dread and wonder he did not know, when two cloaked and hooded figures emerged slowly out of the gloom. He could not tell whence they came or whether they had been there all the time. They bent their steps towards the sacristy and, as they were about to pass Tristan in his hiding-place, they paused as if conscious of another presence.

"As we proceed in this matter," whispered the one voice, "I grow fearful. You know my relations to the Senator—"

"Your anxiety moves me not," croaked the other voice. "Deem you to attain your ends by mortal means?"

The voice caused Tristan to shudder as with an ague, though he saw not him who spoke.

"What of yourself?" whispered the first speaker.

"Have you forgotten," came the hoarse reply, "that either I am soulless, or else my spirit, damned from its beginning, will scarce be saved by the grace of Him I dare not name! You are defiled in the very conversing with me."

The tone in which these words were spoken, either defied answer, or, if a response was made, it did not reach Tristan's ears as they slowly, noiselessly, proceeded upon their way.

Tristan vaguely listened for the echo of their retreating footsteps as, passing behind the altar, they disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them.

Now he was seized with a terrible fear. What, if they were to repeat the sacrilege? He thought he recognized the voice of the first speaker; but this no doubt was but a trick of his excited imagination.

Determined to prevent so terrible a crime, he crept cautiously down the narrow passage through which they had disappeared. Six steps he counted, then he found himself in a room which seemed to be part of the sacristy, yet not a part, for a postern stood open through which gleamed the misty moonlight.

There was little doubt in Tristan's mind that they had passed out through this postern which had been left unguarded, and he found his conjectures confirmed, when his eye, accustoming itself to the radiance without, saw two misty figures passing along the road that leads past the Cœlian Hill through fields of ruins.

Taking care so they would not be attracted by the sound of his steps, Tristan crept in the shadows of roofless columns, shattered porticoes and dismantled temples, half hidden amid the dark foliage that sprang up among the very fanes and palaces of old. At times he lost sight of his quarry. Again they would rise up before him like evil spirits wandering through space.

As Tristan continued in his pursuit, he began to be beset by dire misgivings.

The twain had vanished as utterly as if the earth had swallowed them and he paused in his pursuit to gain his bearings. Had he followed two phantoms or two beings in the flesh? Had he abandoned his watch for two penitents who had perchance been locked in the church?

What might not be happening at the Lateran at this very moment! How would Don Garcia construe his absence?

A tremor passed through his limbs. He started to retrace his steps, but some unknown agency compelled him onward.

Penetrating the gloomy foliage, Tristan found himself before a large ruin, grey and roofless, from the interior of which came, muffled and indistinct, the sound of voices.

Two men were stealthily creeping beneath the shadow of a wall that extended for some distance from the ruin.

Both wore long monkish garbs and were muffled from head to toe. Over their faces they wore vizors with slits for eyes and mouth. One of the twain was spare, yet muscular. His companion walked with a stooping gait and supported himself by a staff.

The light which had attracted Tristan, emanated from a lantern which they had placed on the ground and which they could shade at will, but which cast its fitful glimmer over the grass plot, revealing what appeared to be a grave, from which the mould had been thrown up. At a short distance there stood a black and stunted yew tree. Before this they paused.

Now, from under his black cassock, the taller produced a strange object, the nature of which Tristan was unable to discover by the fitful light of the moon.

No sooner was it revealed to his companion, than the latter began to chant a weird incantation, in which he who held the strange object joined.

Louder and more strident grew their voices, and, notwithstanding the warmth of the summer night, Tristan felt an icy shudder permeate his whole being while, with a strange fascination, he watched the twain.

Now he who supported himself by a staff uttered a shrill inarticulate outcry, and, producing a long, gleaming knife from under his cassock, stabbed the thing viciously, while his voice rose in mad, strident screams:

"Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!"

The fit of madness seemed to have caught his companion. Producing a knife similar to that of the other he, too, stabbed the object he held in his hand, shrieking deliriously:

"Agora! Agora! Patrisa! Agora!"

An hour was to come when Tristan was to learn the terrible import of the apparently meaningless jumble which struck his ear with mad discordance.

Suddenly he felt upon himself the insane gleam of two eyes, peering from the slits of the bent figure's mask.

There was a death-like stillness, as both looked towards the intruder. Tristan would have fled, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot. His energies were paralyzed as under the influence of a terrible spell.

The stooping form raised aloft a small phial. A bluish vapor floated upward, in thin spiral curls.

The effect was instantaneous. Tristan was seized by a great drowsiness. His limbs refused to support him. He no longer felt the ground under his feet. His hand went to his head and, reeling like a drunken man, he fell among the tall weeds that grew in riotous profusion around the ancient masonry.

The setting moon shone out from behind a fleecy cloud, and in the pallid crimson of her light the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose weird and ghostly in the summer night.

---

[CHAPTER IX]
THE FEAST OF THEODORA

A fairy-like radiance pervaded the great pavilion in the sunken gardens of Theodora on Mount Aventine.

It was a vast circular hall, roofed in by a lofty dome of richest malachite, from the centre of which was suspended a huge globe of fire, flinging blood-red rays on the amber colored silken carpets and tapestries that covered floors and walls. The dome was supported by rows upon rows of tall tapering crystal columns, clear as translucent water and green as the grass in spring, and between and beyond these columns were large oval shaped casements set wide open to the summer night, through which the gleam of a broad lake, laden with water lilies, could be seen shimmering in the yellow radiance of the moon.

The centre of the hall was occupied by a long table in the form of a horseshoe, upon which glittered vessels of gold, crystal and silver in the sheen of the revolving globe of fire, heaped with all the accessories of a sumptuous banquet, such as might have been spread before the ancient gods of Olympus in the heyday of their legendary prime.

Strange scents assailed the nostrils: pomegranate and frankincense, myrrh, spikenard and saffron, cinnamon and calamus mingled their perfume with the insidious distillations of the jasmine, and spiral clouds of incense rose from tripods of bronze to the vaulted ceiling.

Inside the horseshoe, black African slaves, attired in fantastic liveries of yellow and blue, crimson and white, orange and green, carried aloft jewelled flagons and goblets, massive gold dishes and great platters of painted earthenware.

There were wines from Cyprus and Malvasia, from Montepulciano and the sunny slopes of Hymettus, Chianti and Lacrymae Christi.

The almost incredible brilliancy of the assembled company, contrasting with the fantastic background, caught the eye as with a stab of pain, held the gaze for a single instant of frozen incredulity, then gripped the throat in a choking sensation by reason of its wonder.

Lounging on divans of velvet and embroidered satin from the looms of fabled Cathay, set in the old Roman fashion round the table, eating, drinking, gossiping and occasionally bursting into wild snatches of song, were a company of distinguished looking personages, richly and brilliantly attired, bent upon enjoying the pleasures offered by the immediate hour. All who laid claim to any distinction in the seven-hilled city were there, the lords of the Campagna and of the adjacent fiefs of the Church. Strangers from all parts of the inhabited globe were there, steeping their bewildered brain in the splendors that assailed their eyes on every point; from Africa and Iceland, from Portugal and India, from Burgundy and Aquitaine, from Granada and from Greece, from Germania and Provence, from Persia and the Baltic shores. Their fantastic and semi-barbaric costumes seemed to enhance the grotesque splendor of the banquet hall.

The Romans were acquainting their guests with the exalted rank of the woman who ruled the city as surely as ever had Marozia from the Emperor's Tomb. And the strangers listened wide-eyed and with bated breath.

Near the raised dais which Theodora was to occupy, at the head of the table, there were three couches reserved for guests who, like the hostess, had not yet arrived.

Below these, by the side of a martial stranger with the air of one who would fain sweep the board clear of his neighbors on either hand, devouring his food in fierce silence, sat the Prefect of Rome, endeavoring to expound the qualities of his countrymen to the silent guest, interspersing his encomiums now and then with a rapturous eulogy of Theodora.

"Monstrous times have robbed us Romans of the power of the sword. But they cannot rob us of the power of the spirit, which will endure forever."

The stranger replied with a stony stare of contempt.

Beside the Lord Atenulf of Benevento sat a tall girl with heavy coils of blue black hair, eyes that smouldered with a sombre light, curved carnation lips set in a perfect, oval face, and seeming more scarlet than they were, owing to her ivory pallor, the tint of the furled magnolia bud which is, perhaps, only seen to perfection in Italy and especially in Rome.

She looked at the grave-faced guest with quickened eyes.

Snatching some vine leaves from a pyramid of grapes, as purple as the tapestries of Tyre, she arose and laying her hand on the stranger's arm, said laughingly:

"Oh, what a brow! Dark as a thundercloud in June. Let me crown you with the leaves of the vine! Perchance the hour will evoke the mood!"

She twisted the leaves into a wreath and dropped them lightly on his head. The eyes of the silent guest, set in a face of sanguine color, leered viciously, with the looks of one who believes himself, however mistakenly, master of himself. There was a contemptuous curl about his lips. They were thick lips and florid.

"Ah!" he turned to the girl in a barbarous jargon, "you are one of those who go veiled in the streets."

And as he spoke his eyes leered with yet livelier malice.

The girl shrank back.

"Those who go veiled know more than ordinary folk," she replied, then mingled with the other guests.

A young woman of great beauty, with light hair and blue eyes, sat beside young Fabio of the Cavalli. Her bare arms, white as snow, and of exquisite contour, encircled his neck, while he drank and drank. Now and then she sipped of the wine, Lacrymae Christi from Viterbo, of the greenish straw color of the chrysoberyl.

Some one had put red poppy leaves in Roxana's hair, and as she sat by the side of the youth, she had the air and appearance of a Corybante.

Now and then she gave a glance at the purple curtain in the background, and one who watched her closely might have seen a strange sparkle in the depths of her clear blue eyes. With a look of disappointment she turned away, as not a ripple of air stirred the curtain's heavy fold. Then her arms stole anew round the youth, who drained one goblet after another, as if each succeeding one yielded up a new secret to him.

Roxana marked it well.

Her eyes danced to his, whenever Fabio's gaze stole towards the purple curtain which screened the mysterious garden beyond, in which the spray of a fountain cast silvery showers into branch-shadowed thickets, hidden retreats and silent, leafy alcoves, where flowers swooned in the moonlight and gave up their perfume for love.

From the immobile sable hangings the youth's eyes wandered back to Roxana's face, but there lurked something strange in their depths.

"Am I not more beautiful than Theodora?" whispered the woman by his side, extending her marble arms before her lover.

"You are beautiful, my Roxana," he stammered. "But Theodora is the most beautiful woman on earth."

Roxana turned very white at his words.

"She has challenged me to come to her feast," she said in a low tone, audible only to Fabio. "Let her look to herself!"

And her eyes were alight with the desire of the meeting.

On an adjoining couch reclined the huge jelly of a man who looked like Pan, enormously swollen and bloated. His paunch bellied out over the table like a full blown sail. His face was stained with many a night of wine. The mulberry eyes twinkled merrily. The swollen lips babbled incessantly.

It was the Lord Boso of Caprara.

"They say that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene—" he turned to Roxana—

The Lord of Norba interposed.

"De mortuis nil nisi bene! Natura abhorret vacuum! I drink to the thirst to come!"

And he raised his goblet and tossed it off.

The Lord Atenulf rose to his feet, swaying and supporting himself with one hand on the table. His great swollen face, big as a ham, creased itself into merriment.

"Let the wine ferret out the thirst!" he shouted, and drained off his tankard.

"Argus hath a hundred eyes! A butler ought to have a hundred hands!" shouted the Lord of Camerino. "Wine,—slaves! Wine,—fill up in the name of Lucifer!"

"My tongue is peeling!"

"Wine! Wine!"

The Africans filled up the empty tankards.

"Privatio praesupponit habitum!" opined the Prefect of Rome.

"We drink to Life and the fleeting Hour."

"Pereat Mors."

And the goblets clanged.

"Who speaks of Death?" shrieked young Fabio of the Cavalli, attempting to rise. The wine was taking effect on his brain.

Roxana drew him back on the couch beside her.

"Fill the goblets! A brimmer of Chianti, red as blood—"

"Or the poppies in Roxana's hair!"

"Wine from Samos—sweetened with honey."

"A decoction of Nectar and Ambrosia."

The strangers who crowded the vast hall began to join in the mirth and jollity of their Roman hosts, their Oriental apathy or frozen stolidity melting slowly in the fumes of the wines.

A curtain had parted and a bevy of girls clad in diaphanous gowns of finest silver gauze made their way into the banquet hall and took their seats, as choice directed, beside the guests. Peals of laughter echoed through the vaulted dome, and excited voices were raised in clamorous disputations and contentious arguments. The wine began to flow more lavishly. The assembled guests grew more and more careless of their utterances. They flung themselves full length upon their luxurious couches, now pulling out handfuls of flowers from the tall malachite jars that stood near, and pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion, now summoning the attendant slaves to refill their wine cups, while they lay lounging at ease among the silken cushions.

There was a moment's silence, sudden, unexplained, like the presage of some dark event.

The slow solemn boom of a bell sounded the hour of midnight.

The voices had ceased.

With one accord, as though drawn by some magnetic spell, all turned their eyes towards the purple curtain through which Theodora had just entered, and, rising from their seats, they broke into boisterous welcome and acclaim. Young Fabio of the Cavalli whose flushed face had all the wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysos, reeled forward, goblet in hand and, tossing the wine in the air, so that it splashed down at his feet, staining his garments, he shouted:

"Vanish dull moon and be ashamed, for a fairer planet rules the midnight sky! To Theodora—the Queen of Love!"

---

"Pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion"

---

He staggered a few paces towards her, holding the empty goblet in his hand. His hair tossed back from his brows and entangled in a half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves, his garments disordered, his demeanor that of one possessed of a delirium of the senses, he stared at the wonderful apparition when, meeting Theodora's icy glance, he started as if he had been suddenly stabbed. The goblet fell from his hand and a shudder ran through his supple frame.

By the side of the Grand Chamberlain, who was garbed in black from head to toe, Theodora descended the steps that led from the raised platform into the brilliant hall.

Greeting her guests with her inscrutable smile, she moved as a queen through a crowd of courtiers, the changing lights of crimson and green playing about her like living flame, her head, wreathed with jewelled serpents, rising proudly erect from her golden mantle, her eyes scintillating with a gleam of mockery which made them look so lustrous, yet so cold.

Thus she strode towards the dais, draped in carnation-colored silks and surmounted by an arch of ebony.

For the space of a moment she paused, surveying her guests. A film seemed to pass over her eyes as her gaze rested upon one who had slowly arisen and was facing her in white silence.

With a slight bend of the head Roxana acknowledged Theodora's silent greeting; then, amidst loud shouts of acclaim she sank languidly upon her couch, trying to soothe young Fabio, who had raised his fallen goblet and held it out to a passing slave. The latter refilled it with wine, which he gulped down thirstily, though the purple liquid brought no color to his drawn and ashen cheek.

Theodora paid no heed to the youth's discomfiture, but Roxana's face was white as death, and her lips were set as the lips of a marble mask as she gazed towards the ebony arch, upon which the eyes of all present were riveted.

With a rustle as of falling leaves Theodora's gorgeous mantle had released itself from its jewelled clasps, and had slowly fallen on the perfumed carpet at her feet.

A sigh quivered audibly through the hall, whether of joy, hope, desire or despair it was difficult to tell. The pride and peril of matchless loveliness was revealed in all its fatal seductiveness and invincible strength. In irresistible perfection she stood revealed before her guests in a robe of diaphanous silver gauze, which clung like a pale mist about the wonderful curves of her form and seemed to float about her like a summer cloud. Her dazzling white arms were bare to the shoulders. A silver serpent with a head of sapphires girdled her waist.

Sinking indolently among the silken cushions of the dais, where she gleamed in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl, set in ebony, Theodora motioned to her guests to resume their places at the board.

She was instantly obeyed.

The Grand Chamberlain took what appeared to be his accustomed seat at her right, the seat at her left remaining vacant. For a moment Theodora's gaze rested thereon with a puzzled air, then she seemed to pay no farther heed.

But a close observer might have noted a shade of displeasure on the brow of the Grand Chamberlain, which no attempt at dissimulation could dispel.

A triumphant peal of music, the clash of mingled flutes, hautboys, tubas and harps rushed through the dome like a wind sweeping in from tropical seas.

Basil turned to Theodora with a searching glance.

"One couch still awaits its guest."

She nodded languidly.

"Tristan—the pilgrim. He is late. Know you aught of him, my lord?"

There was an air of mockery in her tone, not unmingled with concern.

Basil's thin lips straightened.

"Perchance the holy man hath other sheep in mind. What is he to you, Lady Theodora? Your concern for him seems of the suddenest."

"What is it to you, my lord?" she flashed in return. "Am I accountable to you for the moods that sway my soul?"

A mocking laugh startled both the Grand Chamberlain and Theodora.

Low as the words between them had been spoken, they had reached the ear of Roxana. Watchful of every shade of expression in Theodora's face, she was resolved to take up the gauntlet her hated rival had thrown to her, to draw her out of her defences into open conflict, for which she longed with all the fire of her soul. Determined to wrest the dominion of Rome from Marozia's beautiful sister, she was resolved to stake her all, counting upon the effect of her wonderful beauty and her physical perfection, which was a match for Theodora's in every point.

This desire on Roxana's part was precipitated by the strange demeanor of young Fabio of the Cavalli. From the moment Theodora had entered the banquet hall his fevered gaze had devoured her wonderful beauty. A feverish restlessness had taken possession of the youth and he had rudely repelled Roxana when she tried to soothe his wine-besotten brain.

"Perchance," she turned to Theodora, "remembering how Circé of old changed her lovers into swine, the sainted pilgrim no longer worships at Santa Maria of the Aventine."

Theodora started at the sound of her rival's hated voice as if an asp had stung her.

"Perchance the well-known blandishments of our fair Roxana might accomplish as much, if report speaks true," she replied, returning the smouldering challenge in the other woman's eyes.

"And why not?" came the purring response. "Am I not your match in body and soul?"

Every vestige of color had faded from Theodora's cheeks. For a moment the two women seemed to search each other's souls, their bosoms heaving, their eyes alight with the desire for the conflict.

Roxana slowly arose and strode toward the vacant seat at Theodora's left.

"When you circled the Rosary on yesternight, fairest Theodora," she purred, "was he not there—waiting for you?"

Instead of Theodora, it was Basil who made reply.

"Of whom do you speak?"

Again the silvery ripple of Roxana's laughter floated above the din.

"Perchance, my Lord Basil, our fair Theodora should be able to enlighten you on that point—"

"Of whom do you speak?" Basil turned to the woman.

There was something ominous in his eyes. His face was pale.

Theodora regarded him contemptuously, her dark slumbrous eyes turning from him to the woman.

"Beware lest I be tempted to strangle you," she spoke in a low tone, her white hands opening and closing convulsively.

"Like Persephoné, your Circassian,—in the Emperor's Tomb?" came the taunting reply.

Theodora's face was white as lightning.

"I should not leave the work undone!"

"Neither should I," came the purring reply, as Roxana extended her wonderful hands and arms. "Meanwhile—will you not inform your guests of the story of the pilgrim, who well-nigh caused Marozia's sister to enter a nunnery?"

A group of listeners had gathered about.

Basil was swaying to and fro in his seat with suppressed fury.

"One convent at least would be damned from gable to refectory," he muttered, emptying the tankard which one of the Africans had just replenished.

Theodora regarded him icily. Her inscrutable countenance gave no hint of her thoughts. She did not even seem to hear the questions which fell thick and fast about her, but there was something in the velvet depths of her eyes that would have caused even the boldest to tremble in the consciousness of having incurred her anger.

The Lord of Norba reeled towards the couch, where Roxana had taken her seat, blinking out of small watery eyes and flirting with his lordly buskins.

"How came it about?"

"What was he like?"

Theodora turned slowly from the one to the other. Then with a voice vibrant with contempt she said:

"A man!"

"And you were counting your beads?" shouted the Lord Atenulf in so amazed a tone, that the guests broke out into peals of laughter.

"It was then it happened," Roxana related, without relating.

"How mysterious," shivered some one.

"Will you not tell us?" Roxana challenged Theodora anew.

Their eyes met. Roxana turned to her auditors.

"Our fair Theodora had been suddenly touched by the spirit," she began in her low musical voice. "Withdrawing from the eyes of man she gave herself up to holy meditations. In this mood she nightly circled the Penitent's Rosary at Santa Maria of the Aventine, praying that the saint might take compassion upon her and deliver unto her keeping a perfect, saintly man, pure and undefiled. And to add weight to her own prayers, we, too, circled the Rosary; Gisla, Adelhita, Pamela and myself. And we prayed very earnestly."

She paused for a moment and looked about, as if to gauge the impression her tale was producing on the assembled guests. Her smiling eyes swept the face of Theodora who was listening as intently as if the incident about to be related had happened to another, her sphinx-like face betraying not a sign of emotion.

"And then?"

It was Basil's voice, hoarse and constrained.

"Then," Roxana continued, "the miracle came to pass before our very eyes. Behind one of the monolith pillars there stood one in a pilgrim's garb, young and tall of stature. His gaze followed our rotations, and each time we circled about him our fair Theodora offered thanks to the saint for granting her prayer—"

She paused and again her gaze mockingly swept Theodora's sphinx-like face.

"And then?" spoke the voice of Basil.

"When our devotions had come to a close," Roxana turned to the speaker, "Theodora sent Persephoné to conduct the saintly stranger to her bowers. And then the unlooked for happened. The saintly stranger fled, like Joseph of old. He did not even leave his garb."

There was an outburst of uproarious mirth.

"But do these things ever happen?" fluted the Poet Bembo.

"In the realms of fable," shouted the Lord of Norba.

"Now men have become wiser."

"And women more circumspect."

Theodora turned to the speaker.

"Perchance traditions have been merely reversed."

"Some recent events do not seem to support the theory," drawled the Grand Chamberlain.

Theodora regarded him with her strange inscrutable smile.

"Who knows,—if all were told?"

"The fact remains," Roxana persisted in her taunts, "that our fair Theodora's power has its limits; that there is one man at least whom she may not drug with the poison sweetness of her song."

In Theodora's eyes gleamed a smouldering fire, as she met the insufferable taunts of the other woman.

"Why do you not try your own charms upon him, fairest Roxana?" she turned to her tormentor. "Charms which, I grant you, are second not even to mine."

Roxana's bosom heaved. A strange fire smouldered in her eyes.

"And deem you I could not take him from you, if I choose?" she replied, the pupils of her eyes strangely dilated.

"Not if I choose to make him mine!" flashed Theodora.

Roxana's contemptuous mirth cut her to the quick.

"You have tried and failed!"

"I have neither tried nor have I failed."

"Then you mean to try again, fairest Theodora?" came the insidious, purring reply.

"That is as I choose!"

"It shall be as I choose."

"What do you mean, fairest Roxana?"

"I mean to conquer him—to make him mine—to steep his senses in so wild a delirium that he shall forget his God, his garb, his honor. And, when I have done with him, I shall send him to the devil—or to you, fairest Theodora—to finish, what I began. This to prove you a vain boaster, who has failed to make good every claim you have put forth—"

Theodora was very pale. In her voice there was an unnatural calm as she turned to the other woman.

"You have boasted, you will make this austere pilgrim your own, body and soul—you will cast the tatters of his soiled virtue at my feet. I did not desire him. But now"—her eyes sank into those of the other woman, "I mean to have him,—and I shall—with you, fairest Roxana, and all your power of seduction against me! I shall have him—and when I have done with him, not even you shall desire him—nor that other, whom you serve—"

Both women had risen to their feet and challenged each other with their eyes.

"By the powers of darkness, you shall not!" Roxana returned, pale to the lips.

"Take him from me—if you can!" Theodora flashed. "I shall conquer you—and him!"

At this point the Grand Chamberlain interposed.

"Were it not wise," he drawled, looking from the one to the other, "to acquaint this holy man with the perils that beset his soul, since the two most beautiful and virtuous ladies in Rome seem resolved to guide him on his Way of the Cross?"

There was a moment of silence, then he continued in the same drawl, which veiled emotions he dared not reveal in this assembly.

"Deem you, the man who journeyed hundreds of leagues to obtain absolution for having kissed a woman in wedlock has aught to fear from such as you?"

Ere Theodora could make reply the tantalizing purring voice of Roxana struck her ear.

"Surely this is no man—"

"A man he is, nevertheless," Basil retorted hotly. "One night I wandered out upon the silent Aventine. Losing myself among the ruins, I heard voices in the abode of the Monk of Cluny. Fearing, lest some one should attempt to harm this holy friar," he continued, with a side glance at Theodora, "I entered unseen. I overheard his confession."

There was profound silence.

It seemed too monstrously absurd. Absolution for a kiss!

Roxana spoke at last, and her veiled mockery strained her rival's temper to the breaking point. Her words stung, as needles would the naked flesh.

"Then," she said with deliberate slowness, "if our fair Theodora persist in her unholy desire, what else is there for me to do but to take him from her just to save the poor man's soul?"

Theodora's white hands yearned for the other woman's throat.

"Deem you, your charms would snare the good pilgrim, should I will to make him mine?" she flashed.

"Why not?" Roxana purred. "Shall we try? Are you afraid?"—

"Of you?" Theodora shrilled.

A strange fire burnt in Roxana's eyes.

"Of the ordeal! Once upon a time you took from me the boy I loved. Now I shall take from you the man you desire!"

"I challenge you!"

"To the death!" Roxana flashed, appraising her rival's charms against her own. Her further utterance was checked by the sudden entrance of one of the Africans, who prostrated himself before Theodora, muttering some incoherent words at which both the woman and Basil gave a start.

"Have him thrown into the street," Basil turned to Theodora.

"Have him brought in," Theodora commanded.

For the space of a few moments intense silence reigned throughout the pavilion. Then the curtains at the farther end parted, admitting two huge Africans, who carried between them the seemingly lifeless form of a man.

An imperious gesture of Theodora directed them to approach with their burden, and a cry of surprise and dismay broke from her lips as she gazed into the white, still features of Tristan.

He was unconscious, but faintly breathing, and upon his garb were strange stains, that looked like blood. The Africans placed their burden on the couch from which Roxana had arisen, and Theodora summoned the Moorish physician Bahram from the lower end of the table, where he had indulged in a learned dispute with a Persian sage. The other guests thronged about, curious to see and to hear.

The Grand Chamberlain changed color when his gaze first lighted on the prostrate form and he felt inclined to make light of the matter hinting at the effect of Italian wines upon strangers unaccustomed to the vintage. The ashen pallor of Tristan's cheeks had not remained unremarked by Theodora, as she turned from the unconscious victim of a villainy to the man beside her, whom in some way she connected with the deed.

Basil's comment elicited but a glance of contempt as, approaching the couch whereon he lay, Theodora eagerly watched the Moorish physician in his efforts to revive the unconscious man. Tristan's teeth were so tightly set that it required the insertion of a steel bar to pry them apart.

Bahram poured some strong wine down the throat of the still unconscious man, then placed him in a sitting position and continued his efforts until, with a violent fit of coughing, Tristan opened his eyes.

It was some time, however, until he regained his faculties sufficiently to manifest his emotions, and the bewilderment with which his gaze wandered from one face to the other, would have been amusing had not the mystery which encompassed his presence inspired a feeling of awe. The Moorish physician, upon being questioned by Theodora, stated, some powerful poison had caused the coma which bound Tristan's limbs and added, in another hour he would have been beyond the pale of human aid. More than this he would not reveal and, his task accomplished, he withdrew among the guests.

From the Grand Chamberlain, whose stony gaze was riveted upon him, Tristan turned to the woman who reclined by his side on the divan. His vocal chords seemed paralyzed, but his other faculties were keenly alive to the strangeness of his surroundings. Perceiving his inability to reply to her questions, Theodora soothed him to silence.

Vainly endeavoring to speak, Tristan partook but sparingly of the refreshments which she offered to him with her own hands. She was now deliberately endeavoring to enmesh his senses, and her exotic, wonderful beauty could not but accomplish with him what it had accomplished with all who came under its fatal spell. An insidious, sensuous perfume seemed to float about her, which caused Tristan's brain to reel. Her bare arms and wonderful hands made him dizzy. Her eyes held his own by their strange, subtle spell. Unfathomed mysteries seemed to lurk in their hidden depths. Without endeavoring to engage him in conversation, much as she longed to question him on certain points, she tried to soothe him by passing her cool white hands over his fevered brow. And all the time she was pondering on the nature of his infliction and the author thereof, as her gaze pensively swept the banquet hall.

The guests had, one by one, returned to their seats. Theodora also had arisen, after having made Tristan comfortable on the couch assigned to him.

Unseen, the heavy folds of the curtain behind her parted. A face peered for a moment into her own, that seemed to possess no human attributes. Theodora gave a hardly perceptible nod and the face disappeared. The Grand Chamberlain took his seat by her side and Roxana flinging Theodora a glittering challenge seated herself beside Tristan.

---

[CHAPTER X]
THE CHALICE OF OBLIVION

A delirium of the senses such as he had never experienced to this hour began to steal over Tristan, as he found himself seated between Theodora, the fairest sorceress that ever triumphed over the frail spirit of man—and Roxana, who was whispering strange words into his bewildered ears.

Across the board the gloomy form of the Grand Chamberlain in his sombre attire loomed up like a shadow of evil in a garden of strangely tinted orchids.

How the time passed on, he could not tell. Peals of laughter resounded now and then through the vaulted dome and voices were raised in clamorous disputations that just sheered off the boundary-line of actual quarrel.

Theodora seemed to pay but little heed to Tristan. Roxana had coiled her white arms about him and, whenever he raised his goblet, their hands touched and a stream of fire coursed through his veins. Only now and then Theodora's drowsy eyes shot forth a fiery gleam from under their heavily fringed lids.

Roxana smiled into her rival's eyes and, raising a goblet of wine to her lips, kissed the brim and gave it to Tristan with an indescribably graceful swaying motion of her whole form that reminded one of a tall white lily, bowing to the breeze.

Tristan seized the cup eagerly, drank from it and returned it and, as their hands touched again, he could hardly restrain himself from giving way to a transport of passion. He was no longer himself. His brain seemed to reel. He felt as if he would plunge into the crater of a seething volcano without heeding the flames.

Even Hellayne's pale image seemed forgotten for the time.

The guests waxed more and more noisy, their merriment more and more boisterous. Many were now very much the worse for their frequent libations, and young Fabio particularly seemed to display a desire to break away from all bonds of prudent reserve.

He lay full length on his silken divan, singing little snatches of song to himself and, pulling the vine-wreath from his tumbled locks, as though he found it too cumbersome, he flung it on the ground amid the other debris of the feast. Then, folding his arms lazily behind his head, he stared straight and fixedly at Theodora, surveying every curve of her body, every slight motion of her head, every faint smile that played upon her lips. She was listening with an air of ill-disguised annoyance to Basil, whose wine-inflamed countenance and passion-distorted features left little to the surmise regarding his state of mind.

On the couch adjoining the one of Fabio of the Cavalli reclined a nobleman from Gades, who, having partaken less lavishly of the wine than the rest of the guests, was engaged in a dispute with the burly stranger from the North, whose temper seemed to have undergone little change for the better for his having filled his paunch.

In the barbarous jargon of tenth century Latin they commented upon Theodora, upon the banquet, upon the guests and upon Rome in general, and the Spaniard expressed surprise that Marozia's sister had failed to revenge Marozia's death, contenting herself to spend her life in the desert wastes of Aventine, among hermits, libertines and fools.

Notwithstanding his besotten mood Fabio had heard and understood every word the stranger uttered. Before he, to whom his words was addressed could make reply, he shouted insolently:

"Ask Theodora why she is content to live in her enchanted groves instead in the Emperor's Tomb, haunted by the spectre of strangled Marozia!"

A terrible silence followed this utterance. The eyes of all present wandered towards the speaker. The Grand Chamberlain ground his teeth. Every vestige of color had faded from his face.

"Are you afraid?" shouted Fabio, raising himself upon his elbows and nodding towards Theodora.

The woman turned her splendid, flashing orbs slowly upon him. A chill, steely glitter leaped from their velvety depths.

"Pray, Fabio, be heedful of your speech," said she with a quiver in her voice, curiously like the suppressed snarl of a tigress. "Most men are fools, like yourself, and by their utterance shall they be judged!"

Fabio broke out into boisterous mirth.

"And Theodora rules with a rod of iron. Even the Lord Basil is but a toy in her hands! Behold him,—yonder."

Basil had arisen, his hand on the hilt of his poniard. Theodora laid her white hand upon his arm.

"Nay—" she said sweetly, "this is a matter for myself to settle."

"A very anchorite," the mocking voice of Fabio rose above the silence.

A young noble of the Cætani tried to quiet him, but in vain:

"The Lord Basil is no monk."

"Wherefore then his midnight meditations in the devil's own chapel yonder, in which our fair Theodora officiates as Priestess of Love?"

"Midnight meditations?" interposed the Spaniard, not knowing that he was treading on dangerous ground.

"Ask Theodora," shouted Fabio, "how many lovers are worshipping at her midnight shrine!"

The silence of utter consternation prevailed. Glances of absolute dismay went round the table, and the stillness was as ominous as the hush before a thunderclap. Fabio, apparently struck by the sudden silence, gazed lazily from out the tumbled cushions, a vacant, besotten smile upon his lips.

"What fools you are!" he shouted thickly. "Did you not hear me? I bade you ask Theodora," and suddenly he sat bolt upright, his face crimsoning as with an access of passion, "why the Lord Basil creeps in and out her palace at midnight like a skulking slave? Ask him why he creeps in disguise through the underground passage. Ay—stranger," he shouted to Tristan, "you are near enough to our lady of Witcheries. Ask her how many lovers have tasted of the chalice of oblivion?"

Another death-like silence ensued.

Even the attendants seemed to move with awed tread among the guests.

Theodora and Roxana had risen almost at the same time, facing each other in a white silence.

Roxana extended her snow-white arms towards Theodora.

"Why do you not reply to your discarded lover?" she taunted her rival. "Shall I reply for him? You have challenged me, and I return your challenge! I am your match in all things, Lady Theodora. In my veins flows the blood of kings—in yours the blood of courtesans. There is not room on earth for both of us. Does not your coward soul quail before the issue?"

Theodora turned to Roxana a face, white as marble, her eyes preternaturally brilliant. "You shall have your wish—even to the death. But—before the dark-winged messenger enfolds you with his sable wings you shall know Theodora as you have never known her—nor ever shall again."

From the woman Theodora turned to the man.

"Fabio," she said in her sweet mock-caressing tone, "I fear you have grown altogether too wise for this world. It were a pity you should linger in so narrow and circumscribed a sphere."

She paused and beckoned to a giant Nubian who stood behind her chair.

"Refill the goblets!"

Her behest executed she clinked goblets with Roxana. An undying hate shone in the eyes of the two women as they raised the crystal goblets to their lips.

Theodora hardly tasted of the purple beverage. Roxana eagerly drained her cup, then she kissed the brim and offered the fragrant goblet to Tristan, as her eyes challenged Theodora anew.

Ere he could raise it to his lips, Theodora dashed the goblet from Tristan's hands and the purple wine dyed the orange colored carpet like dark stains of blood.

White as lightning, her eyes ablaze with hidden fires, her white hands clenched, Roxana straightened herself to her full height, ready to bound at Theodora's throat, to avenge the insult and to settle now and here, woman to woman, the question of supremacy between them, when she reeled as if struck by a thunderbolt. Her hands went to her heart and without a moan she fell, a lifeless heap, upon the floor.

Ere Tristan and the other guests could recover from their consternation, or fathom the import of the terrible scene, a savage scream from the couch upon which Fabio reclined, turned the attention of every one in that direction.

Fabio, suddenly sobered, had risen from his couch and drained his goblet. It rolled upon the carpet from his nerveless grasp. For a moment his arms wildly beat the air, then he reeled and fell prone upon the floor. His staring eyes and his face, livid with purple spots, proclaimed him dead, even ere the Moorish physician could come to his aid.

Theodora clapped her hands, and at the signal four giant Nubians appeared and, taking up the lifeless bodies, disappeared with them in the moonlit garden outside.

The Grand Chamberlain, rising from his seat, informed the guests that a sudden ailment had befallen the woman and the man. They were being removed to receive care and attention.

Though a lingering doubt hovered in the minds of those who had witnessed the scene, some kept silent through fear, others whose brains were befuddled by the fumes of the wine gave utterance to inarticulate sounds, from which the view they took of the matter, was not entirely clear.

The shock had restored to Tristan the lost faculty of speech. For a moment he stared horrified at Theodora. Her impassive calm roused in him a feeling of madness. With an imprecation upon his lips he rushed upon her, his gleaming dagger raised aloft.

But ere he could carry out his intent, Theodora's clear, cold voice smote the silence.

"Disarm him!"

One of the Africans had glided stealthily to his side, and the steel was wrenched from Tristan's grip.

"Be silent,—for your life!" some one whispered into his ear.

Suddenly he grew weak. Theodora's languid eyes met his own, utterly paralyzing his efforts. A smile parted her lips as, without a trace of anger, she kissed the ivory bud of a magnolia and threw it to him.

As one in a trance he caught the flower. Its fragrance seemed to creep into his brain, rob his manhood of its strength. Sinking submissively into his seat he gazed up at her in wondering wistfulness. Was there ever woman so bewilderingly beautiful? A strange enervating ecstasy took him captive, as he permitted his eyes to dwell on the fairness of her face, the ivory pallor of her skin, the supple curves of her form. As one imprisoned in a jungle exhaling poison miasmas loses all control over his faculties, feeling a drowsy lassitude stealing over him, so Tristan gave himself up to the spell that encompassed him, heedless of the memories of the past.

Now Theodora touched a small bell and suddenly the marble floor yawned asunder and the banquet table with all its accessories vanished underground with incredible swiftness. Then the floor closed again. The broad centre space of the hall was now clear of obstruction and the guests roused themselves from their drowsy postures of half-inebriated languor.

Tristan drank in the scene with eager, dazzled eyes and heavily beating heart. Love and hate strangely mingled stole over him more strongly than ever, in the sultry air of this strange summer night, this night of sweet delirium in which all that was most dangerous and erring in his nature waked into his life and mastered his better will.

Outside the water lilies nodded themselves to sleep among their shrouding leaves. Like a sheet of molten gold spread the lake over the spot where Roxana and Fabio had found a common grave.

Surrounding this lake spread a garden, golden with the sleepy radiance of the late moon, and peacefully fair in the dreaminess of drooping foliage, moss-covered turf and star-sprinkled violet sky. In full view, and lighted by the reflected radiance flung out from within, a miniature waterfall tumbled headlong into a rocky recess, covered and overgrown with lotus-lilies and plumy ferns. Here and there golden tents glimmered through the shadows cast by the great magnolia trees, whose half-shut buds wafted balmy odors through the drowsy summer night. The sounds of flutes, of citherns and cymbals floated from distant bosquets, as though elfin shepherds were guarding their fairy flocks in some hidden nook. By degrees the light grew warmer and more mellow in tint till it resembled the deep hues of an autumn sunset, flecked through the emerald haze, in the sunken gardens of Theodora.

Another clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, then the chimes of bells, such as bring tears to the eyes of many a wayfarer, who hears the silvery echoes when far away from home and straightway thinks of his childhood days, those years of purest happiness.

A curious, stifling sensation began to oppress Tristan as he listened to those bells. They reminded him of strange things, things to which he could not give a name, odd suggestions of fair women who were wont to pray for those they loved, and who believed that their prayers would be heard in heaven and would be granted!

With straining eyes he gazed out into the languorous beauty of the garden that spread its emerald glamour around him, and a sob broke from his lips as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by degrees into subdued and tremulous semitones, the clarion clearness of the cymbals again smote the silent air.

Ere Tristan, in his state of bewilderment, could realize what was happening, the great fire globe in the dome was suddenly extinguished and a firm hand imperiously closed on his own, drawing him along, he knew not whither.

He glanced about him. In the semi-darkness he was able to discern the sheen of the lake with its white burden of water lilies, and the dim, branch-shadowed outlines of the moonlit garden. Theodora walked beside him, Theodora, whose lovely face was so perilously near his own, Theodora, upon whose lips hovered a smile of unutterable meaning. His heart beat faster; he strove in vain to imagine what fate was in store for him. He drank in the beauty of the night that spread her star-embroidered splendors about him, he was conscious of the vital youth and passion that throbbed in his veins, endowing him with a keen headstrong rapture which is said to come but once in a lifetime, and which in the excess of its folly will bring endless remorse in its wake.

Suddenly he found himself in an exquisitely adorned pavilion of painted silk, lighted by a lamp of tenderest rose lustre and carpeted with softest amber colored pile. It stood apart from the rest, concealed as it were in a grove of its own, and surrounded by a thicket of orange-trees in full bloom. The fragrance of the white waxen flowers hung heavily upon the air, breathing forth delicate suggestions of languor and sleep. The measured cadence of the waterfall alone broke the deep stillness, and now and then the subdued and plaintive thrill of a nightingale, soothing itself to sleep with its own song in some deep-shadowed copse.

Here, on a couch, such as might have been prepared for Titania, Theodora seated herself, while Tristan stood gazing at her in a sort of mad, fascinated wonderment, and gradually increasing intensity of passion.

The alluring smile and the quick brightening of the eyes, so rare a thing with him who, since he had left Avalon, was used to wear so calm and subdued a mask, changed his aspect in an extraordinary manner. In an instant he seemed more alive, more intensely living, pulsing with the joy of the hour. He felt as if he must let the natural youth in his veins run riot, as Theodora's beauty and the magic of the night began to sting his blood.

Theodora's eyes danced to his. She had marked the symptoms and knew. Her eyes had lost their mocking glitter and swam in a soft languor, that was strangely bewitching. Her lips parted in a faint sigh and a glance like are shot from beneath her black silken lashes.

"Tristan!" she murmured tremulously and waited. Then again: "Tristan!"

He knelt before her, passion sweeping over him like a hurricane, and took her unresisting hands in his.

"Theodora!" he said, bending over her, and his voice, even to his own ears had a strange sound, as if some one else were speaking. "Theodora! What would you have of me? Speak! For my heart aches with a burden of dark memories conjured up by the wizard spell of your eyes!"

She gently drew him down beside her on the couch.

"Foolish dreamer!" she murmured, half mockingly, half tenderly. "Are love and passion so strange a thing that you wonder—as you sit here beside me?"

"Love!" he said. "Is it love indeed?"

He uttered the words as if he spoke to himself, in a hushed, awe-struck tone. But she had heard, and a flash of triumph brightened her beautiful face.

"Ah!" and she dropped her head lower and lower, till the dark perfumed tresses touched his brow. "Then you do love me?"

He started. A dull pang struck his heart, a chill of vague uncertainty and dread. He longed to take her in his arms, forget the past, the present, the future, life and all it held. But suddenly a vague thought oppressed him. There was the sense that he was dishonoring that other love. However unholy it had been, it was yet for him a real and passionate reality of his past life, and he shrank in shame from suppressing it. Would it not have been far nobler to have fought it down as the pilgrim he had meant to be than to drown its memory in a delirium of the senses?

And—was this love indeed for the woman by his side? Was it not mere passion and base desire?

As he remained silent the silken voice of the fairest woman he had ever seen once more sent its thrill through his bewildered brain in the fateful question:

"Do you love me, Tristan?"

Softly, insidiously, she entwined him with her wonderful white arms. Her perfumed breath fanned his cheeks; her dark tresses touched his brow. Her lips were thirstily ajar.

He put his arms about her. Hungrily, passionately, his gaze wandered over her matchless form, from the small feet, encased in golden sandals, to the crowning masses of her dusky hair. His heart beat with loud, impatient thuds, like some wild thing struggling in its cage, but though his lips moved, no utterance came.

Her arms tightened about him.

"You are of the North," she said, "though you have hotter blood in your veins. Now under our yellow sun, and in our hot nights, when the moon hangs like an alabaster lamp in the sky, a beaten shield of gold trembling over our dreams—forget the ice in your blood. Gather the roses while you may! A time will come when their soft petals will have lost their fragrance! I love you—be mine!"

And, bending towards him, she kissed him with moist, hungry lips.

He fevered in her embrace. He kissed her eyes—her hair—her lips—and a strange dizziness stole over him, a delirium in which he was no longer master of himself.

"Can you not be happy, Tristan?" she whispered gently. "Happy as other men when loved as I love you!"

With a cold sinking of the heart he looked into the woman's perfect face. His upturned gaze rested on the glittering serpent heads that crowned the dusky hair, and the words of Fabio of the Cavalli knocked on the gates of his memory.

"Happy as other men when they love—and are deceived," he said, unable to free himself of her entwining arms.

"You shall not be deceived," she returned quickly. "You shall attain that which your heart desires. Your dearest hope shall be fulfilled,—all shall be yours—all—if you will be mine—to-night."

Tristan met her burning gaze, and as he did so the strange dread increased.

"What of the Grand Chamberlain?" he queried. "What of Basil, your lover?"

Her answer came swift and fierce, as the hiss of a snake.

"He shall die—even as Roxana—even as Fabio, he who boasted of my love! You shall be lord of Rome—and I—your wife—"

Her words leaped into his brain with the swift, fiery action of a burning drug. A red mist swam before his eyes.

"Love!" he cried, as one seized with sudden delirium. "What have I to do with love—what have you, Theodora, who make the lives of men your sport, and their torments your mockery? I know no name for the fever that consumes me, when I look upon you—no name for the ravishment that draws me to you in mingled bliss and agony. I would perish, Theodora. Kill me, and I shall pray for you! But love—love—it recalls to my soul a glory I have lost. There can be no love between you and me!"

He spoke wildly, incoherently, scarcely knowing what he said. The woman's arms had fallen from him. He staggered to his feet.

A low laugh broke from her lips, which curved in an evil smile.

"Poor fool!" she said in her low, musical tones, "to cast away that for which hundreds would give their last life's blood. Madman! First to desire, then to spurn. Go! And beware!"

She stood before him in all her white glory and loveliness, one white arm stretched forth, her bosom heaving, her eyes aflame. And Tristan, seized with a sudden fear, fled from the pavilion, down the moonlit path as if pursued by an army of demons.

A man stepped from a thicket of roses, directly into his path. Heedless of everything, of every one, Tristan endeavored to pass him, but the other was equally determined to bar his way.

"So I have found you at last," said the voice, and Tristan, starting as if the ground had opened before him, stared into the face of the stranger at Theodora's board.

"You have found me, my Lord Roger," he said, after recovering from his first surprise. "Here I may injure no one—you, my lord, least of all! Leave me in peace!"

The stranger gave a sardonic laugh.

"That I may perchance, when you have told me the truth—the whole truth!"

"Ask, my lord, and I will answer," Tristan replied.

"Where is the Lady Hellayne?"—

The questioning voice growled like far off thunder.

Tristan recoiled a step, staring into the questioner's face as if he thought he had gone mad.

"The Lady Hellayne?" he stammered, white to the lips and with a dull sinking of the heart. "How am I to know? I have not seen her since I left Avalon—months ago. Is she not with you?"

The Lord Laval's brow was dark as a thunder cloud.

"If she were with me—would I be wasting my time asking you concerning her?" he barked.

"Where is she, then?" Tristan gasped.

"That you shall tell me—or I have forgotten the use of this knife!"

And he laid his hand on the hilt of a long dagger that protruded from his belt.

Tristan's eyes met those of the other.

"My lord, this is unworthy of you! I have never committed a deed I dared not confess—and I despise your threat and your accusation as would the Lady Hellayne, were she here."

Steps were heard approaching from the direction of the pavilion.

"I am a stranger in Rome. Doubtless you are familiar with its ways. Some one is coming. Where shall we meet?"

Tristan pondered.

"At the Arch of the Seven Candles. Every child can point the way. When shall it be?"

"To-morrow,—at the second hour of the night. And take care to speak the truth!"

Ere Tristan could reply the speaker had vanished among the thickets.

For a moment he paused, amazed, bewildered. Roger de Laval in Rome! And Hellayne—where was she? She had left Avalon—had left her consort. Had she entered a convent? Hellayne—where was Hellayne?

Before this dreadful uncertainty all the events of the night vanished as if they had never been.

For a long time Tristan remained where Roger de Laval had left him. The cool air from the lake blew refreshingly on his heated brow. A thousand odors from orange and jessamine floated caressingly about him. The night was very still. There, in the soft sky-gloom, moved the majestic procession of undiscovered worlds. There, low on the horizon, the yellow moon swooned languidly down in a bed of fleecy clouds. The drowsy chirp of a dreaming bird came softly now and again from branch shadowed thickets, and the lilies on the surface of the lake nodded mysteriously to each other, as if they were whispering a secret of another world.

At last the moon sank out of sight and from afar, softened by the distance, the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the Aventine were wafted through the flower scented summer night.

END OF BOOK THE SECOND

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